THE FAITH OF THE DOUBTERS.

DOUBT, scepticism, infidelity, are words that convey much the same meaning to the average Christian mind, and a very disagreeable and even hateful meaning it is. The doubter is habitually spoken of as if he were a dreadful person. If not a sneer, a sigh is thought to be the fit accompaniment of any mention of him. Once he was roundly cursed; now he is let off with pity; and those who pity him felicitate themselves upon the beautiful spirit which they show in merely pitying, not cursing him. One of Paul's grandest sayings, "He that doubteth is damned if he eat," is truncated by the omission of the last three words, so that it reads, "He that doubteth is damned," and in this form the text is one of the most popular in the Bible. But what if it should prove that doubt is the obverse of a medal whose reverse is faith; that the doubter, instead of being damned (that is, condemned) either at the bar of his own conscience or at the bar of the generations that succeed him, is there approved and honored? What if, when Tennyson sings,

"There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds,"

he takes no poetic license, but reports the simple truth? What if the doubters as such are or may be believers? That a man may be a doubter and a believer at the same time, no one will be so silly as to deny. He may doubt some things while believing others, as Luther doubted the infallibility of the Church while believing in the infallibility of the Bible. But that the doubter as such is often a believer, that any of the faith there is in him, it may be the best and purest, lives in the doubt, as Tennyson affirms, this is another matter. It is indeed, and a much more important one. Strange and shocking as this idea may appear to many, it is confirmed by the history of civilization and religion, from the earliest down to the present time.

Tennyson did well to say "in honest doubt.' If he had said in earnest doubt, he would have done still better. There is doubt which is neither honest nor earnest; doubt which is mere cavilling, mere affectation. There may be more faith in this even than in half the creeds as commonly accepted, and still be precious little. "I have my doubts about the authorship of Shakspere, sagely remarks the unearnest would-be literary sceptic. So had Delia Bacon; so has Judge Holmes. But in their doubt there lives an immense amount of faith-faith in the plays, faith that their writer was a great philosopher and no mere manager of plays or actor on the boards. But the unearnest would-be literary sceptic takes up their notion, without weighing any of their arguments, and the only faith there is in his doubt is

faith in his own personal consequence. "I have my doubts about a democratic form of government, says the unearnest would-be political sceptic, unable to distinguish between a momentary eddy and the great onward movement of events; and all the faith there is in such a doubt as his is less than any red republican's of Paris, and hardly more than a Sixth Ward repeater's. "I have my doubts whether there ever was any such person as Jesus," says the unearnest would-be religious sceptic. So had General Hitchcock, who wrote a book quite famous in its day called Christ, the Spirit; but his doubt of the actual existence of Jesus was the obverse of his faith in the sect of the Essenes, of whose devout imagination he regarded the gospels and the sublime figure of Jesus as the manifest outcome. But in the mere whim of the ordinary doubter on this head, there lives no faith in any thing but whimsicality and contrariety. It can safely be affirmed that “he that doubteth" in any of these unearnest, unthoughtful, frivolous ways is at least damned to the contracted hell of his own poor egotism and vanity and unearnestness; let us hope also to the accusing hell of his own better hours, and to the purifying hell of social disesteem.

Let it be understood then, once for all, that, when I speak of the faith of the doubters, I do not mean the faith of charlatans and coxcombs, but the faith of earnest, thoughtful men, whose doubts are no mere froth upon the surface of their minds, but their deep ocean currents, not lightly entertained, but feeding on their vital ener

gies, having their heart and life in them. There are doubters whose doubts are of this sort. The world has never been without them. Let us trust it never will be to the remotest future generations. Such a calamity will be the signal for an immobility and stagnation like that of China, which, at whatever stage of civilization it supervenes, is an intolerable calamity. So far the world has never been without its honest, earnest doubters. And they have not all been monopolized by the religious sphere. We have a way of talking as if doubt were a disease peculiar to the religious constitution. But it is not. Disease or not, no sphere of human thought or action is proof against it. Every profession has and has had its doubters; every trade, every occupation, every department of human activity. And, so that they have been honest, earnest doubters, as such they have been men of faith; the faith living in the doubt, not merely outside of it or in spite of it; the doubt being the sign and the expression of the faith.

I do not mean to say that all the men who have been good for any thing since time began have been doubters, or that there is no faith in the world except that which wears the form of doubt. For its best health, the world needs two sorts of men : the sort that hold on and the sort that go ahead; the conservatives and the progressives; the men who say, "Let well enough alone," and the men who say, The best is good enough for me." It needs both kinds to make a world. And it needs more conservatives than progressives; because