al
proportions--that is, by the infinitesimal contributions of countless
unselfish individualities. They are desirous that man should some day
know the truth. Is there any unselfishness in the aspiration?

THE ATHEIST

says: "First and last of all, we have no idea of anything beyond, above,
or superior to these curious bodies of ours. The highest flight of
genius in art, religion, or invention has never reached beyond the body
of man." These statements are false. They should not be accepted by
anybody as true, for they tend to a lower grade of existence. They lead
the pardoned convict back to his hatching-house of crime. Philosophy of
this kind forgets the "still small voice."

THE NOBLE "IT BEHOOVETH ME!"

rings in every intelligent mind. "I have not done that which I ought to
have done; I therefore am disturbed and in unrest." Where does this
thought come from? Why do I sit in judgment on myself? The atheist says
it is selfishness. A peculiar selfishness is that voice of duty which
cries to those whom we rightly call good to go forth to the bedside of
the distressed, is it not? At the corner of Lake and Paulina streets, in
Chicago, a man, his wife, and his child were nearly burned to death. The
child died, and perhaps they all died. They were taken to the hospital.
The next day a thrifty landlord tumbled their goods down-stairs to the
sidewalk.

WHAT WAS IT IN MY SOUL

which, when I saw the young barbarians all at play tearing and
destroying those meagre comforts, cried out so sharply: "O, ignoble! you
do not lift your finger to succor this poor man! Have shame upon you!"
Why is it that that voice still sounds in my ears? Surely it is not
selfishness. Listen to a short colloquy:

Immanuel Kant--Duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond
insinuation, nor flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up
thy naked law to the soul, and so extorting for thyself always
reverence, if not obedience; before whom all appetites are dumb, however
secretly they rebel; whence thy original?

The Atheist--I am glad to inform you that selfishness is the original
you seek!

FURTHER FALLACIES.

In the interest of an advancing Christian humanity, I call attention to
still further fallacies as I hear them in the mouth of atheism: "While
we cannot quite hold that the idea expressed by the modern word
'selfishness' is new to mankind, we can safely say that it is only
recently that selfishness came to be