ilure, for I've tried it, and
proved it for more years than I've tried my clock, and it never yet
failed _me_."

"Perhaps not, Tommy," said Foster; "that's what you call your
experience; but for all that, it has proved a failure generally."

"How do you make out that, William? I can find you a score of families
in Crossbourne as the Bible hasn't failed, and their neighbours know it
too."

"Ah! Very likely; but what I mean is this: it has proved a failure when
its power and truth have come to be tested in other parts of the world--
that's the general and almost universal experience, in fact."

"Well, now, that's strange," replied Bradly, "to hear a man talk in that
way in our days, when there's scarce a language in the known world that
the Bible hasn't been turned into, so that all the wide world own it has
been bringing light and peace into thousands of hearts and homes--
there's no contradicting that; and that's a strange sort of failure--
summat like old John Wrigley's failure that folks were talking about; he
failed by dying worth just half a million."

"Well, but when we men of science and observation say that the Bible is
a failure, we mean that it hasn't accomplished what it should have done
supposing it to be a revelation from the Supreme Being."

"Ah, you are right there, William! I quite agree with you."

"Do you hear him, mates?" cried Foster triumphantly. "He owns he's
beaten."

"Not a bit of it," cried Bradly. "What I grant you is this, and no
more: the Bible hasn't done all it should have done, and would have
done. But why? Just because men wouldn't let it: as our Saviour said
when he was upon earth, `Ye will not come unto me that ye might have
life.' That's man's fault, not the Bible's."

"Ah, but if the Bible had really been a revelation from heaven, it ought
to have converted all the world by this time, Tommy Tracks."

"What! Whether men would or no? Nay; that's making men mere machines,
without any will of their own. If men hear the Bible, and still choose
to walk in wicked ways, who's to blame? Certainly not the Bible."

"That won't do, Tommy. What I mean is this: men of real science and
knowledge declare that your Bible has proved to be a failure just
because Christianity has not accomplished what the Bible professed that
it would accomplish."

"Indeed!" said the other quietly; "how so? I think, William, you're
shifting your ground a bit. But what has the Bible claimed for