(1) How can we know what is the will of God except by considering what makes for human welfare?  Our Bible is but one of a number of holy books which are held to be a revelation of God’s will.  Even if we grant the superior authority of the Hebrew- Christian Bible, can we rely on its teachings implicitly?  How do we know that it is a revelation of God except by our experience of the beneficence of its teachings?  As a matter of fact, there is wide disagreement, among those who accept the Bible as authoritative, over its real teachings.  A text is available for every variety of belief.  Christians usually emphasize those texts that make for what they hold true, and slur over others.  “Look not on the wine when it is red” is preached in every Sunday School, while “Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake” is seldom quoted save by brewers.  The Bible, the work of a hundred hands during a span of a thousand years, represents a great variety of views.  It is certainly an inspired book if there ever was one; so much inspiration could not have come from it if none had gone into it.  But to extract a satisfactory ethical code from it is possible only by a process of judicious selection and ingenious inference.  The Mosaic code is held by Christians to be now abrogated; the recorded teachings of Christ are fragmentary and touch only a few fundamental matters.  How, for example, shall we ascertain from the Bible the will of God with respect to the trust problem, or currency reform, or penal legislation?  Times have changed, our problems are no longer those of the ancient Jews; a hundred delicate questions arise to which no answers can be will of God to be clearly and unquestionably known, why should we obey it?  Because he is stronger, and can reward or punish?  If that is the reason, the freehearted man would defy Him.  Might does not make right.  If God were to command us to sin, it would not be right to obey Him.  On the contrary, we should sympathize with Mill in his outburst:  “Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do:  he shall not compel me to worship him.  I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.” [Footnote:  An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, chap.  VI.] It is clear that God is to be obeyed only because He is good and his will right.  Not the existence of a will, but its goodness makes it authoritative.  But how do we know that it is good unless we have some deeper criterion to judge it by?  How do we know that God is not an arbitrary tyrant?  The answer must be that we judge the Christian teachings to be a revelation of God because we know on other grounds what we mean by “right” and “good,” and see that these teachings fit that conception.  If the teachings were coarse and low, no prodigies or miracles would suffice to attest them as God-given; it would be superstition