very notions of reality
which they in theory repudiate and by counting upon the very fixed
points which they prove are not there. They could earn a lot more
respect for their notions if they were willing to live by them; but
this they are careful not to do. Their ideas are brain-deep, not
life-deep. Wherever life touches them they repudiate their theories and
live like other men.

The Christian is too sincere to play with ideas for their own sake. He
takes no pleasure in the mere spinning of gossamer webs for display. All
his beliefs are practical. They are geared into his life. By them he
lives or dies, stands or falls for this world and for all time to come.
From the insincere man he turns away.

The sincere plain man knows that the world is real. He finds it here
when he wakes to consciousness, and he knows that he did not think it
into being. It was here waiting for him when he came, and he knows that
when he prepares to leave this earthly scene it will be here still to
bid him good-bye as he departs. By the deep wisdom of life he is wiser
than a thousand men who doubt. He stands upon the earth and feels the
wind and rain in his face and he knows that they are real. He sees the
sun by day and the stars by night. He sees the hot lightning play out of
the dark thundercloud. He hears the sounds of nature and the cries of
human joy and pain. These he knows are real. He lies down on the cool
earth at night and has no fear that it will prove illusory or fail him
while he sleeps. In the morning the firm ground will be under him, the
blue sky above him and the rocks and trees around him as when he closed
his eyes the night before. So he lives and rejoices in a world of
reality.

With his five senses he engages this real world. All things necessary to
his physical existence he apprehends by the faculties with which he has
been equipped by the God who created him and placed him in such a world
as this.

Now, by our definition also God is real. He is real in the absolute and
final sense that nothing else is. All other reality is contingent upon
His. The great Reality is God who is the Author of that lower and
dependent reality which makes up the sum of created things, including
ourselves. God has objective existence independent of and apart from any
notions which we may have concerning Him. The worshipping heart does not
create its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moral
slumber in the morning of its regene