Preface

      This book was not written to create an argumentative situation with those who are gracious enough to read it. It is not a lawyer's brief to be presented formally to a jury of peers, but a sharing with others of the simple faith which is the hope of one man's life.

      The author knew what it meant as a boy to pad barefooted along country lanes shaded by trees which created cool tunnels with their interlacing branches above. And in such an environment he came also to walk by faith in a God who was in heaven, and yet not remote from the earth which He had made. Now, in the asphalt jungles created by that state which is called growing civilization, there has arisen the need for examining again the grounds of such belief to determine if they are adequate to a mature person in a more sophisticated age.

      Not only will you read the author's conclusion but you will also be treated to the reasoning by which he arrived at it. That rationalization may not always appear logical to you, and the conclusion may be divergent from your own, but the book is not intended to be a profound treatise. It represents the reflection of a plain man and makes no pretension of scholarship or erudition. It re-states the faith of a one-time country lad caught up as a man in the whirling vortex created by an urbanizing culture.

      It is not the contention of the author that everything new is bad, and everything old is good. Rather than either of these views, he holds that there are certain values which are unchanged and changeless, and that it is these which form the solid rock to be gripped by the anchor of hope. The boulders dislodged by doubt and rolled along the bed of the turbulent stream of modern thought may provide subjects for dialogue but not a foundation for a stable life.

      If the reader is motivated to give earnest heed to the things which God has spoken and to examine his own life in the light of what has been revealed, the prime purpose of this little volume will have been achieved.