Notes of a sermon preached by the Rev. C. E. Darwent in Union natured criticisms by the Man with a Duster," issued recently in Church, Tientsin, on Sunday even-, the London press) I want to ing, January 2 Jo Text; '"In the! dwell on Mr. Balfour first, because beginning God created the heavens; he is like the late Mr. Gladstone, and the earth." Genesis. I. i. a theologian, as well as a states-As we are beginning the mystery man. I do so because so many of a new year of life, it is as well people think, or say they think, to begin it on right lines, for a that busy people have no time to bad beginning makes a hod end-think about questions, such as ing, and the only way to begin that of God, and our relation to rightly is to begin it with God, Him. Sometimes they say they with whom Moses says, everything are not fitted for it. Again, there begins. Moses has hardly recover-is no doubt some prejudice against ed his breath from describing how hooks by theologians, as__ profes-suns and sparkling star-clusterr sional, perhaps one-sided. And and galaxies were created, when "there is also an idea abroad, that he has to account for man on this all the really able men are against little planet, which whisks him religion; a foolish idea, but there round the sun in a year. And it is.
Moses tells us that man comes from Tae Man. the same source as the universe; and what is more, man is made in Now here. is Mr. Balfour, an "God's iniage,' which suns and immensely able man; like so uiany atoms are surely not. They are of our statesmen, a man of vast dend; man is alive. And so it, all-round ability, and subtle ina year, or thereabouts; and being what he is, the whole world of society has always been open to him. He could have lived a thoroughly superficial, frivolous life, if he had liked. But he has not liked. He has been a serious thinker. He has withstood the temptations of his position, You are bound to respect the opinions of a man with grit in him, like that.
"THEISM aND Humanity."
And so we turn to his book, "Yheism and Humanism," 1 hope with respect. here are tour lines of thought in it, which are well worth our consideration. I will take the last one first. He says, "We are dead-certain about a great many things of whick we have far from perfect evidence"? Huw true that is! He names some generally accepted doctrines, such as the conservation of energy, and gravy. We know little about them, yet we can't do without them. There is the ether, which conveys light and heat from the stars and sun. No one knows anything about must be far more important for man to keep right with his origin, than for dead things.
All the troubles of the world come, one way.or another, from man being atwist with God. We know what happens when foreign matter, like arita, get into an engine. There is trouble, and a break. So, as foreign matter has got into man's nature—passions and lusts that are not at all in the original image of us—there is no wonder the world is in such a mess to-day. So this New Year Sunday it is well to begin high Tikely enough to drop down again ith thoughts of God. We are in the course of the year, still it is well to begin high with God. For just as the very universe itself would fall to pieces, if He withdrew His power, so do our lives go to pieces, if we withdraw ourselves from Him.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.