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Mr. Chairman, gentlemen. It is comfort to me, to Mr. Chairman, to know that your conscience is still exercised by that lecture I gave so many months ago. Perhaps it augurs well for the lectures that I shall be giving here. But for all that, this evening I want to continue and develop something that I said at the end of last week's lectures. Last week we were considering the Christian view of man's world and its future, and we thought at the end of the lecture somewhat about the implications of the dissolution of the earth for man himself. Tonight I want to develop this question of mankind's own future, to ask what potential he may have, what hope of progress. My procedure will be very similar to what it has been in previous weeks. I want, first of all, to state the Christian view, then to mention some of the criticisms that have been leveled chiefly by people of humanist persuasion, against that Christian view. Thirdly, to examine the humanistic alternative, to ask whether it is really better or more rational than the Christian view. And finally, to answer some of the criticisms that I have raised and that are leveled by opponents of Christianity. I want to emphasize again this evening that my intention and, uh, objective is very limited. It was not altogether understood, I gathered, last week, and therefore I repeat it again, and I want to underline it. By dismissing the criticisms that come from the other side, so to speak, by showing that humanism has nothing anywhere near better or even as reasonable as Christianity, I am not thereby assuming that Christianity has been proved true. To give the evidence for the truth of Christianity, one would require much longer time than is available in this course of lectures, although I do hope to say something about Christian evidence next week. But really, the evidence for Christianity is so large that it would take not one lecture, but a series of lectures. So then, I am not supposing that by demolishing the arguments of the other side, I am offering proof positive for Christianity. You may, of course, not even feel that I have demolished the arguments for the other side anyway. But my objective is this, rather, merely to show that the criticisms that have been leveled against Christianity are not valid, and that Christianity need not be ashamed of itself, that the humanist alternative is nowhere near so rational, and certainly cannot be described in any sense as better. Now, when it comes to the question of man's potential, man's progress as a being, Christianity and humanism have some common ground, namely this, that both of them preach that man has a potential and that man can, if he will, make progress. Their differences, of course, are large. Humanism and Christianity differ in defining what that progress is, and how that progress is to be attained, and what ground there is for hope that progress may reasonably be expected. But they do have this slender piece of ground in common that both of them preach progress. Let me put before you some statements by some humanists, and I ought to add the warning that humanists are many and their view varies, and therefore I am use humanism as a very wide term, covering for the moment all sorts of somewhat different beliefs. Let me put before you the statement on human progress by two or three humanists. Here, for instance, is Julian Huxley. He says there have been two critical points in the past of evolution, points at which the process transcended itself by a dead state to a fresh one, new properties. The first was marked by the passage from the inorganic phase to the biological. The second by that from the biological to the psychosocial. Now we are on the threshold of a third. As the bubbles in a cauldron on the boil mark the onset of the critical passage of water from the liquid to the gaseous state, so the evolution of humanist ideas in the cauldron of present day thought marks the onset of the passage from the psychosocial to the consciously purposive phase of evolution. Today, in the twentieth century, man, the evolutionary process, is at least becoming conscious of this and is beginning to study itself with a view to directing its future. So far, Julian Huxley. Let me quote you another. Doctor Peter Medawar of London remarks, at this point, I think it is most important to distinguish between four stages in the evolution of the brain. The nervous system began perhaps as an organ which responded only to elective stimuli from the environment. The animal that possessed it reacted instinctively or by rote, if at all. There then arose a brain which could begin to accept instructive stimuli from the outside world. The brain, in this sense, has dim and hesitant beginnings, going far back in geological time. The third stage, entirely distinguishable, was the evolution of a non-genetical system of heredity, founded upon the fact that the most complicated brains can do more than merely receive instructions. One way or another, they make it possible for the instructions to be handed on. The existence of this system of hereditary, of tradition in its most general sense, is a defining characteristic of human beings, and it has been important for perhaps five hundred thousand years. In the fourth stage, not clearly distinguishable from the third, there came about a systematic change in the nature of the instruction passed on from generation to generation. An evolution, therefore, and one which has been going on at great pace in the past two hundred years. So then, according to Julian Huxley, we are about to enter, if we have not already entered, a further stage of evolution, when man, the evolutionary process, has become conscious of his ability to direct evolution and to direct it with some purpose. On the biological side, let us hear what Professor Haldane has to say, uh, about the, um, possibilities. A man shall interfere deliberately and purposefully in, uh, his evolution on the biological side. In, uh, a debate with certain colleagues sponsored by the Cyber Foundation, Paul Dane is reported as making these points. Clearly, a gibbon is better pre-adapted than a man for life in low gravitational fields, such as that of a spaceship, an asteroid, or perhaps even the moon. A platyrine with a prehensile tail is even more so. Gene grafting may make it possible to incorporate such features into the human stocks. The human legs and much of the pelvis are not wanted. Men who have lost their legs by accident or mutation would be specially qualified as astronauts. If a drug is discovered with an action like that of thalidomide, but on the leg rudiments only, not the arms, it may be useful to prepare the crew of the first spaceship to the Alpha Centauri system, thus reducing not only their weight, but their food and oxygen requirements. A regressive mutation to the condition of our ancestors in the mid-Pliocene, with prehensile feet, no appreciable heels, and an ape-like pelvis, would be still better. Some progress. There is no immediate prospect of men encountering high gravitational fields, as they would when they reach the solid or liquid surface of Jupiter. Presumably, they should be short-legged or quadrupedal. I would back an echondroplastic against a normal man on Jupiter. The professor thinks, therefore, that we could, uh, at least adapt hu- hu- human stock to the conditions on other worlds. And then he, amongst many other things, mentions the experiments that he would like to do with the brain. Let us suppose that it becomes possible to induce proliferation of the foma- formatio reticularis. If this is possible in an adult, it will be first tried by a trained psychologist who volunteers for the job. Perhaps the first two volunteers will report a great extension of consciousness, while the third will go mad or develop an inoperable brain tumor. Or perhaps it may be possible to induce proliferation in adults, and it will be necessary to do it in babies. To us, this may seem horrible. I have often risked other people's lives in physiological experiments, and though none died, at least one was permanently injured, but they were all volunteers, and I was taking the same risks as they. The exploration of the interior of the human brain will be as dangerous as that of the a- of the Antarctic continent. To command orders of some deaths. The eagerness with which parents always urge their children to li- risk their lives in wars, and say that they have given their son if he is d- he does not return. I suspect that in a society with different ideals to our own, many parents would be prepared to risk their baby's life in the hope that it might develop supernormal power. So far then, Professor Halliday. How realistic his suggestions are, how much he had his tongue in his cheek, I could not begin to say. But he seems to be speaking earnestly of the serious possibility and purpose to interfere with human genes and alter the development of the human race, and in particular to expand the possibilities of the human brain. Other humanists have maintained, and still do maintain, that science can likewise improve human ethic. Panofsky is quoted in that same debate as making the point that it is science which has taught us the true value of truth, and has made people see that adherence to truth is an exceedingly important thing, and that society runs better when everybody adheres to truth. So that adherence to truth has become, so to speak, an ethic, and in its tale it is involved the other, uh, concomitant goods, that if a man is going to be truthful, he must have personal and political freedom, and that he must be honest, that he must be prepared to let go prejudice. So much then for the statement, uh, of the program of man's potential as it is viewed by some humans. Let us hear now what the Bible has to say and what Christianity preaches as man's potential. On a spiritual level, the Bible preaches that man's potential is to become a son of God. I use the word become advisedly and deliberately, quoting, in fact, a phrase from the Bible itself, where it is said that to those that receive Jesus Christ our Lord, he gives them the power to become children of God. I need perhaps to elaborate that, for it is a common view that Christianity teaches that all men are children of God, and that must be, um, uh, denied if it is meant that all men equally bear spiritual relation to God. Bible does, in fact, make the point that all men, being creatures of God, know God as Father in the sense that they know his fatherly care. But when the New Testament talks in this special sense of becoming a son of God, it is referring to a something that is not common to all men. Men are born creatures of God, so the Bible declares, it is open to them to become children of God, to rise to a different and higher relationship with God than they knew as his creatures. Relationship that involves receiving a life, a kind of life that they did not possess before. Becoming then a child of God is what the Bible advertises as man's potential. The Bible too has something to say about man's future physically, and there again, it holds out the hope to mankind of developing a different kind of human life than what it now has. The Bible says that of our present bodies, they are natural bodies, but at the resurrection we shall be given spiritual bodies. Bodies that do not depend on quite the same things for their life spring as these, and maintenance as these present bodies. And Christianity maintains that this is not merely a fairy tale, but that this changeover has already happened to one individual, that the man Jesus Christ, who walked this earth in a body like ours, a natural body, and died and was buried, rose again, not to resume exactly the same form of body as he had before, but to resume a body that was now s- uh, changed, fundamentally changed, though still remaining a human body. Christianity, then, is not behind humanism in its program. Christianity has a potential to offer man both on the spiritual level and on the physical. Albeit Christianity does not propose to make the changes in man's physical makeup by means of experiments in chemistry and biology. But now let me come to the second part of my lecture. You will be aware, all of us are aware, that Christianity and its program for man's future has been criticized, and that several very weighty objections have been leveled against it. We might sum up those objections in the phrase that Sir Gilbert Murray, uh, coined when he talked of Christianity, along with other religions, exhibiting a failure of nerve. Allow me to trouble you with another, uh, longish excerpt to be quoted. Here is Gilbert Murray opening his chapter in his work on the five stages of Greek religion, opening his chapter that is entitled The Failure of Nerve. Says he, anyone who turns from the great writers of classical Athens, say Sophocles or Aristotle, to those of the Christian era must be conscious of a great difference in tone. There is a change in the whole relation of the writer to the world about him. The new quality is not specifically Christian. It is just as marked in the Gnostics and to Mithras worshippers as in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, in Julian and Plotinus, as in Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a rise of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense of pessimism, a loss of self-confidence, of hope in this life and of faith in normal human effort, a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation, an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul to God. It is an atmosphere in which the aim of the good man is not so much to live justly, to help the society to which he belongs and enjoy the esteem of his fellow creatures, but rather by means of a burning faith, by contempt for the world and its standards, by ecstasy, suffering and martyrdom, to be granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his immeasurable sin. There is an intensifying of certain spiritual emotions, an increase of sensitiveness, a failure of nerve. So Gilbert Murray sums up the distinctive atmosphere and doctrines of Christianity. Distinctive, that is, from the older Greek systems of philosophy. To be fair to Gilbert Murray, I ought to add that he goes on to say that this failure of nerve may or may not be a good thing, but he himself, he makes it quite evident as he proceeds, and thinks that this failure of nerve, on the whole, is a bad thing. Let us sum up and state specifically for the purpose of our thinking now, these, um, criticisms that have been leveled against Christianity, and particularly its scheme of salvation and its potential program for men. It is said that Christianity shows a loss of faith in the goodness of the world around it. That it begins to look on the world as in great part bad. And it manifests the desire as quickly as possible to get away from this world and escape to a heaven that is one pure and everlasting delight. And certainly, if one were to give ear to certain hymns, notably the sort, uh, that are included in Sankis' sacred songs and solos, one might, uh, regard the, uh, charge as being true. There has been a lot sung in Christian hymnology about getting away from this wicked evil world as soon as possible and going off to a fairy tale heaven. More seriously, Christianity is charged with a loss of confidence in self. It produces a man who is guilt-ridden, preoccupied with a sense of his sin and shortcoming, and for everlasting being concerned with how to make atonement, how to rid his conscience of this overbearing sense of guilt, and induces a man, in a man, a willingness to make any sacrifice and suffering, to forego the world and despise it if need be, if only he can get forgiveness for what he so mistakenly feels is his immeasurable unworthiness and his sin and guilt. All of which feelings, if a humanist has at all, he dismisses or learns to live with as the mistaken hangovers of an incorrect upbringing in childhood. And then it is alleged that Christianity encourages people to be ascetic, not only to regard the world around them as bad, but to regard their bodies as something evil, and to imagine that man's good and man's holiness demands asceticism, and a rough treating of the body, if not a positive despising of the body, very often a regarding of its lawful appetites as somehow infradig, if not positively sinful. And once more, one reads widely in Christian literature and includes a good deal of medieval stuff and, uh, some modern in some particular interpretations of Christianity, one would, uh, feel the charge was justified. There have been many who, in the name of Christianity, have taught that the body is evil, that marriage is dishonorable, or at least infringe, that the body is to be treated as an enemy and despised and ill-treated for the sake of the soul. Though I say two things about that in passing, that one, that didn't start with Christianity, um, you will find it much earlier, for instance, in Plato, and two, this view of Christianity should not be confused in our thinking with the biblical view of Christianity, which, as we shall presently see, states something quite different. And then it has been alleged that Christianity's program for man's development and its emphasis on what the Bible calls personal salvation has been, if not antisocial, at least asocial, in that it encourages a man to devote his energies mainly, chiefly, to the salvation of his own soul, and to forget or disregard or give little place to the needs of society in general. That is an allegation which has not only been leveled at Christianity by humanists, but has been leveled against evangelical Christianity by those Christians who are not evangelical. And then the whole business of man's potential, man's development, man's progress, what the Bible calls man's salvation, has been held to be degrading. It has been held, it is degrading for inculcating in mankind a slavish, or at least an immature dependence upon God. For the humanist, who doesn't believe in God anyway, the development of this sense of dependence has been nothing more than the perpetuating of a father fixation, merely offering to people the cozy comfort of childhood's days, instead of challenging a man to develop out of childhood's days into independent. This idea of dependence, of being saved by faith in God, of depending on God, is a retrogressive step psychologically, and is a degrading, uh, process in man. It has been said too, that Christianity is most undesirable in making human behavior conditioned by fear of punishment on the one hand, and hope of reward on the other. That it has preached to people a heaven if they behave themselves, and a hell if they don't behave themselves. And has made people go in for being good, not for being good's sake, but for the hope of the reward in heaven. And has made them stop doing evil, not because they dislike evil, but rather because they fear being sent to hell for doing evil. And that to introduce such motives into ethics is to take a retrograde step. Rather, we ought to seek to hold out to men no reward at all, and exhort them to be good just for the sake of being good, because goodness is a valuable end in itself. So the Christian doctrines of heaven and hell get dismissed. And then, as you heard Gilbert Murray complaining, as I read to you from his work, Christianity is said to foster childishness rather than mature thinking. It encourages a man to cut the Gordian knot of his difficulties by appealing to authoritative revelation, an easy way out, instead of learning to think his own way through his problems. That therefore all these different processes involved in the salvation as Christianity paints it are, so the humanist considers, degrading, leading not to progress, but if to nothing worse, leading to keeping man in an immature and not thoroughly developed state. Well, certainly these charges, if they be true, are exceedingly serious charges. I hope I have stated them fairly. As far as I know, in raising these objections, I am not setting up an Aunt Sally or a straw man just to knock down. These are, at any rate, objections that I have had leveled against me by colleagues of mine in the course of my small experience. I would say this, however, in passing, before we come to deal with these objections, that objections or no, Christianity at least has a rationality on which it is founded, can give you some reasonable explanation of the hope that is within it. Whereas, when we come to consider humanism, as I hope now to do briefly, we shall find as one of humanism's grave weaknesses that it has no rationality to give, no good grounds for holding out hope of the progress about which it talks in such glowing colors. In fact, you will be aware that not all humanists are optimistic. There are humanists who are thoroughgoing pessimists, who see no hope and no future in this world that has come to be, according to them, by such a colossal accident, has no genuine purpose within it, but only the appearance of purpose. That may indeed one day be put to an end by a similarly colossal accident, making a mock of any appearance of purpose that mankind has entertained. And let us think about the propositions of what we may call the optimistic humanists. We should observe their emphasis on progress along material, physical, biological lines. And surely it is fair to say that Christianity is not against any progress in the realm of the physical, material, biological, if it'd be genuine progress. It would be enough, perhaps, to quote a half dozen names of scientists who have been thoroughgoing Christians, not claiming that their, their science, uh, somehow buttressed the truth of Christianity, but just to point out the fact that Christianity is not in conflict with true science and is not a stick-in-the-mud opponent of progress. But, of course, Christianity will refuse to be content with a progress that is nothing more than physical and biological. Certainly, in these last years, we have made tremendous strides in the building of machines that simulate the human brain. But then, suppose we can make a machine that can do everything better that we normally do. I admit, submit to you we shall still be left with something less than human. We may be able to make a computer that can beat you at chess. A computer still will not be able to share your systems of value or tell you why it enjoys playing chess. And anyway, many animals around us in different directions have possessed greater powers than humans possess. Dogs can hear far better than humans, and more. Mere development along physiological lines, biological lines, isn't necessarily progress, even judged by the standards we have attained already. We shall very rightly look to humanists to be able to show that there has been some progress in the realm of ethics and personality, and that there is good hope for better progress in the future. I may recur, for instance, to the claim that science it is that has brought to light the importance of truth. I must say that such a claim cannot hold water and reverses the process of history. It was the desire for truth that led to science, and not science that led to a desire for truth. Many philosophers, not even Christian, have raised their voice to announce the value and importance of truth, long before our modern scientists or even the Greek scientists got going on purely scientific investigation. Nor ought we to be misled by the advances that have been made as a result of science in what we may call social relations and social comfort. Psychology teaches us valuable lessons on how to bring up a child. That parent is a sheer fool who hides his head to that knowledge. The parent who makes use of it, I cannot really see how you may claim that that parent has somehow made an advance in ethics. Science may point to us new possibilities of action, may bring to light new facts about situations that we didn't know before. Science still leaves the individual man to make the choice. And if science be asked, why should a man be truthful? Science itself can provide no answer, no ultimate answer, no absolute system of value. Moreover, science has yet to explain to us what it is within each one of us that even when we come to deal with purely scientific questions and matters of evidence, we constantly feel a strong urge, and sometimes give into it, to wink at some evidence and concentrate on others. Why do we do it? And this criticism of science's inability to provide us with a serious and absolute standard of values by which we may judge behavior, by which we may determine whether behavior ultimately is better or not better, is an exceedingly important thing, the more important when people like Haldane talk about the possibilities of biological experiments on human beings. Suppose science is eventually able to take your legs off so that you'll be better able to get around the moon. Will science be able to tell us why it is a better thing to be on the moon anyway? And whether the scientist has the right eventually to come in and determine what babies shall be so altered? And suppose science can alter the area of consciousness in the brain. Will science be able, can it already, tell us why we should start? These are questions that we shall want to know, because as science proceeds, we shall find ourselves constantly more and more surrounded by experts. Experts whose scientific knowledge we cannot possibly hope to check on the scientific side. Therefore, we shall want to know whether we are to trust them or not to trust them. It will not, in fact, relieve the individual ordinary man in the street from his, uh, necessity of trusting somebody. It will demand a system of values by which the man shall decide whom he shall trust. In that, of course, humanism is not altogether different from Christianity, that tells a man that in the end he must learn to trust. Only Christianity exhorts a man to trust Jesus Christ. But then our Lord gives a man very good reasons for trusting. I ask, can science point so far to any real ethical and moral improvement in men that has been brought about by its unaided means. See, it is not a question merely of making the world just a little bit more pleasant to live in. Pirates on a pirate ship have the sense to see that they better treat each other pretty decently and act fairly if they want to succeed in their venture. Doesn't necessarily mean that what they're doing is a right thing, viewed against the rest of society. The Bible's indictment is not merely that men have indulged in sort- all sorts of abominable uh vices on times, but that man is plagued at his very heart with more than a tendency to go his own way. Basically selfish. I am not aware that science has made any difference to that tendency, or that humanism has produced any series of values that has made men less selfish. When we ask what evidence there is, concrete, not merely an article of faith, what concrete evidence there is, that we are now, in fact, on the verge of this third stage in evolution, when we are able purpose of purposefully to control our development, humanists, as far as I know, do not serve. Julian Huxley, in the passage I read to you, talked about bubbles on a cauldron, and he likened the present upsurge of humanism to the bubbles on the cauldron. It seems that he argues that the upsurge of humanism at the moment is evidence that we are on the stage, uh, on the threshold of a third stage in evolution. As far as I can see, is grossly circular argument. Where is the evidence? Where is the evidence that we're doing anything in kind different from what scientists have been doing for centuries? As far as I can see, humanism here, as in so many places, asks us to take a leap of faith and hope. In saying that, I must add that supposing the hopes and faith of humanists were well grounded in evidence, they still have no real hope for the individual. Aldine can talk of adaptations of man's brain and body in ten thousand years from now. It can add little color and little hope and little meaning for the individual man in the street. At least it seems to me to be unfair of the humanists to damn Christianity as though it were all pie in the sky tomorrow. And all the humanists can offer is progress ten thousand years from now, which is about the time Haldane thinks that it will take to manipulate these mutations. Perhaps I've spoken too long on that negative side. Let me come finally to the objections that have been raised against Christianity. I want to repeat that in us expressing my dissatisfaction with the progress and arguments of humanists, I am not supposing that I have thereby proved the truth of Christianity. Nor, in what I am now about to say, as I try to do as a Christian, with the arguments that have been leveled against Christianity, am I supposing that by answering the objections I have offered proof positive for Christianity. I want to underline that once more. What I do want to do is to say, many of the objections that are currently raised are not fair to the factual evidence. For instance, let us take this Christian view of the world. Now, I freely admit that there have been many Christians, hundreds of Christians of certain thoughts, that have exhibited a world-denying attitude in the sense that they have very often climbed up pillars and stood on the top of them, or gone and shut themselves away from the world, that have preached that the end of the world is so near that it's no sense going about one's daily business. That this world is all an illusion. This world is bad and must be escaped from. But against those interpretations of Christianity, I personally would appeal to the Bible itself. The Old Testament view of man and man's attitude and relationship to the physical world is this, that man was made to have dominion over the earth and to subdue it. God saw that the earth was good and put man in charge of an earth with a mandate to subdue it and control it and develop it. And everywhere in the Old Testament insists on the goodness of God's handiwork and of the right and sacred duty of man, so to develop earth and use it as a responsible steward of very good and worthy possessions. The Bible does say that man has failed in his stewardship. That man has sinned against God, and sinning against God has reduced himself to a slave instead of a master. And that he needs to be saved. And that the present situation is not what God originally intended. When the Bible maps out God's future for mankind, that is for redeemed mankind, the New Testament recurs to the Old Testament words. It says that not unto angels has God put in subjection the inhabitable world to come, but that his intention is to put this habitable world under the control of man. When man redeemed has been taught his deeper lessons to recognize evil, to have the power to overcome it. When he arrives at that state, he shall not go off into some ethereal heaven, but shall have under his control a very material world. Though I spoke last week of the Bible's announcement that one day this earth is going to be dissolved, I still make the statement that man redeemed is going to be put in charge of a very literal world, very literal universe, on the grounds that the Bible itself declares there is to be a new heaven and a new earth. Not merely a new heaven, but a new earth. The Bible states that matter is good. Redeemed humanity amongst many of its other activities will have the charge of a redeemed and purified universe. Christianity does not preach escapism. As for the charge, that it is all a question of running away from the world, the charge can be shown to be foolish in light of the some two hundred and fifty occasions when the New Testament firmly declares that Jesus Christ is literally coming again. If there is one thing the New Testament says clearer than others, it is certainly this, that Jesus Christ is literally coming again. Disciples who felt him after his resurrection and were asked to notice that he was flesh and bone were told that this same Jesus shall so come. The world hasn't seen the last of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ certainly hasn't abandoned this world. This is not escapism. Though it may sound to some apocalyptic and why, may provoke them to dismiss Christianity as irresponsible, yet the mere facts must be allowed to speak for themselves. The Testament talks of Christ's return and reigning over this world. As to asceticism, again, I must say, I must admit that there have been many people in the name of Christianity that have practiced asceticism. Many still do. And lingering in many minds who are not given outwardly to asceticism, you will find ascetic ideas, suspicions that somehow sex is bad, suspicion that we are more holy in definite ratio to our discomfort. But it ought perhaps to be enough to quote Paul's words to his co- converts at Colossae, to show that this idea is not the Christian idea. In that epistle, you may remember, Paul discusses what he calls will worship, despising the body, fastings, observance of days, and the severe discipline of the contemporary Gnostics, and he dismisses it all as of absolutely no value, and urges his Colossian converts to eschew and run away from such ascetic practices, for the simple reason that they are of no virtue against our sinful tendencies. You may quote Paul as saying that he himself kept his body under. Certainly so. Paul expected of Christian missionaries and Christian people in general an athlete's view of life, not a flabby Christianity of self-indulgence, but a vigorous and virile Christianity of self-control. That is far from the ascetic idea and outlook which he himself roundly condemns openly in his epistles. It does not help a soul near God, nor to salvation, to practice asceticism. The Bible says that to forbid people to marry, or to teach to abstain from certain foods, is not Christianity, but is a doctrine of demons. I quote you the straightforward words of the New Testament. Let's come deeper to the heart of the matter, to the charge that Christianity plays a man with feelings of guilt, playing on those guilt feelings, preoccupies him with his failures, makes his life one constant endeavor to get rid of guilt and somehow make atonement. How it is true to say that the Bible preaches that men have sinned. The Bible preaches against sin. You may call it by what name you care, but whatever our persuasion, we must face the fact that men often behave far below their own standards, and a good, a good deal of human misery is caused by such behavior. But I'm not sure that this accusation is true, that Christianity leaves a man hag-ridden with guilt complexes, or that Christianity pays on them. The Bible's account of the way sin has come in is, in fact, a far more kindly thing than many folks have realized. The Bible diagnoses human problem as springing not primarily from the acts of individuals, but from a fall of the human race in the person of its progenitor. It doesn't face a man and tell him that he is responsible for being a sinner, but tells him that he was born a sinner, and that not by his own fault. In that, the Bible is certainly kind. And then the Bible says that man can be saved. The Bible, in very clear and downright and outright terms, says not only that there is pardon and forgiveness, but that a man can receive that pardon and forgiveness and know it. That this pardon and forgiveness means that a man can know he as he is accepted with God and will never come into condemnation. If that sounds too strong, let me quote you scripture itself. So scripture, there is therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Our Lord himself is quoted as saying that the man who comes to him and believes him not only has eternal life here and now, but shall never come into condemnation. It is number one plank in Christian salvation that a man is forgiven, forgiven utterly and completely, not merely forgiven up to the time being, but assured that God receives him and accepts him for Christ's sake and will never cast him out. If that sort of assurance is going to be accused of keeping a man hand-ridden with guilt. I shall protest that the argument is exceedingly unfair to the facts. Bible says that this acceptance and this forgiveness comes not from what a man does or deserves, but solely through the sacrifice of Christ at Calvary. So that I want to emphasize it in passing. For it's not generally known, so I discover. Bible preaches that through Christ man can have forgiveness and know it here on earth now. That he will never come into condemnation, but is eternally accepted by God. As to the charge that Christianity discourages human effort, again, it is part true, part untrue. Christianity does preach that to be saved, a man must depend solely on Christ, that a man cannot buy his salvation, not even in the coin of good behavior. And therefore is dependent. The Bible preaches it openly. Yeah, many people object. They say, why shouldn't a man be encouraged to do his very best? They don't like being told that we cannot do anything for our salvation. They think it takes away our manhood, our initiative. It takes away the desire to strive. So even when God would give salvation to a man free, there are those who object. They seem to want it both ways. In spite of the fact that experience shows that the men who try best still come short. If salvation depended on their efforts, would be hag-ridden with conscience for the rest of their day. The more they tried, the more they would be guilt-ridden. But quite apart from that, this matter of salvation, the Bible says, is a question of personal relations with God, and that God insists that the personal attitude of heart is far more important than individual actions. In as much as individual actions spring out of the heart, that the main and fundamental thing is a man's personal attitude to God. Therefore, God insists that salvation should come through a readjustment of a man's heart to God, his willingness to bow to God, his willingness to believe in this deep and personal sense, and to receive God as Savior. And not by somehow paying God in the coin of good behavior. Having said that, I hope that gives the light to the charge that is made that Christianity encourages people to be good out of cupboard love, out of the hope that they will get a reward of heaven for being good. Christianity says no such thing. Christianity says the opposite. Christianity says that you cannot buy heaven, and you cannot buy salvation, and you cannot buy God's love, and you cannot deserve it. These things are given free, and they can be received by us all while we are still sinners, if only in genuine repentance, a willingness to be saved from sin. We are prepared to cast ourselves totally and unreservedly upon Jesus Christ our Lord as Savior. As for the question that we fry people by fear. I merely want to say, we should not be deceived into thinking that fear is always an unhealthy thing. If we had no fear, we should soon end up under a trolley bus or sitting in a fire. Fear is a healthy thing, unless it be perverted by submerged complexes. A man that does not fear in the true sense of fear and want to avoid evil is lacking in his moral makeup, just as a man who, under the stress and strain of war, gives up fearing a gun or a bomb, becomes careless, hysterically funny in the face of the danger of loss of life. The Bible unashamedly preaches that to choose against God will lead to an eternity that is unqualified disaster. A thing that is fearful and mounts in fear in proportion as we have any true sense of the value of a A man. man. So then, there are, so to speak, two alternatives. There's on the one hand, there's the decision to trust self, to trust man, for man to trust himself.