Blair Collection > Rhys Lewis, minister of Bethel

248 RHYS LEWIS.
mind, tliat the utmost I could attain to by inyestigation and
study is ' Don't know,' 1 should take my hat off to every
donkey I met, and call him Blessed ! But, thank God ! we
have a revelation. To me two facts are plain. One is that
man's heart, once awakened, keeps questioning ceaselessly ;
the other, that the experience of the cleverest men the world
ever saw is that the heart's only answer to its own questions is,
• Don't know.' Now, if the Bible answers the profoundest and
most abstruse questions of my heart — if it can explain my
existence, my wretchedness and my future — if it can direct me
to One able to allay the uneasiness of my soul — I shall believe
that Book has emanated from God. If it were not so, why not
show me its equal, nay its superior ? I challenge any man,
any nation, aye, the pick of all the nations under heaven, to
produce anything like it that is not indebted to the Bible itself
for both thought and matter.
" But where am I wandering to, pray ? What I was talking
of was the danger of your living on the dreams of your heart
and fancying that to be religion. Some people linger within
themselves in melancholy, sentimental study, their high places
being groans and tears. That is not religion. Eeligion is
something more practical than that. It is a constant going out
of yourself, is religion. ' The kingdom of God within you,'
that's religion, sure enough. ; but its ' goings forth,' like its
Author, ' have been from of old, from everlasting.' You will
get more good for your soul in one day from looking to Christ
and endeavouring to do his commandments, than from a hun-
dred years of looking into yourself. Do you know it is when
you lose yourself in the desire to do the ordinary duties of life
as a service to God that you become most religious ? Behind
the counter, serving a customer conscientiously and to the best
of vour ability, do you know you are pleasing God as well as
when you are upon your knees in the privacy of your own
apartment? Amidst all our stupidity, ignorance and darkness
there appear some things of which we can be certain. You are
sure in your mind that it is right to tell the truth ; tell the
truth, then, under every circumstance. You are sure that to
live honestly is the proper thing ; live, therefore, so honestly
that conscience cannot raise a finger at you. Eemember that
•whatever borders on shabbiness and meanness is detestable in