Oxford House Papers

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Now it is just this which we have to challenge; and to maintain, on the contrary, that true religion is sure to have difficulties.<br><br>This does not mean that the more difficulties the better; or that Christians do not mind how much the argument goes against them, and believe in spite of their reason. Of course difficulties must be considered and fairly met, and each difficulty counts for something, at least at first sight, in an argument against religion; and difficulties many enough or great enough would serve to crush religion. But, side by side with this, it is true, as shall be shown, that there must be difficulties about religion, so that a certain amount of difficulty of certain kinds need not encourage the enemies of religion nor disturb its friends.<br><br>There must be difficulties about religion. Let us only try to imagine the contrary. Let us suppose some one coming to us with a religion which had no difficulties. He must tell us all about God, so that nothing shall remain unexplained, and all about God's ways of working, so that they may lie spread before us just as a man's work might He must know all that we can ask about death and another world; he must be able to tell us, without any hesitation or any uncertainty, what is right, i.e. God's Will, in every case.