pantly, on the score of his not being able to comprehend them, rejects truths of which he yet has greater evidence, though not direct evidence, of their being truths, than he has of the contrary. Now, if we have had earthly fathers, and have given them reverence,' after this fashion, and when we have become men have applauded our submission as appropriate to our condition of dependence, 'shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of Spirits, and live? If, then, the present be a scene of moral education and discipline, it seems fit in itself that the evidence of the truths we believe should be checkered with difficulties and liable to objections, not strong enough to force assent, nor so obscure as to elude sincere investigation.

'God, according to the memorable aphorism of Pascal already cited, has afforded sufficient light to those whose object is to see, and left sufficient obscurity to perplex those who have no such wish. All that seems necessary or reasonable to expect, is, that as we are certainly not called upon to believe anything without reason, nor without a preponderance of reason, so the evidence shall be such as our faculties are capable of dealing with; and that the objections shall be only such as equally baffle us upon any other hypothesis, or are insoluble only because they transcend altogether the limits of the human understanding: which last circumstance can be no valid reason, apart from other grounds, either for accepting or rejecting a given dogma.

Now, we contend, that it is in this equitable way that God has dealt with us as moral agents, in relation to all the great truths which lie at the basis of religion and morals; and, we may add, in relation to the divine origin of Christianity. The evidence is all of such a nature as we are accustomed every day to deal with and to act upon; while the objections are either such as reappear in every other theory, or turn on difficulties absolutely beyond the limits of the human faculties.' (Pages 217-218.)

'It is much the same with the evidences of Christianity. Whether a certain amount and complexity of testimony are likely to be false; whether it is likely that not one, but a number of men, would endure ignominy, persecution, and the last extremities of torture, in support of an unprofitable lie;

whether such an original fiction as Christianity-if it be fictionis likely to have been the production of Galilean peasants; whether anything so sublime was to be expected from fools, or anything so holy from knaves; whether illiterate fraud was likely to be equal to such a wonderful fabrication; whether infinite artifice may be expected from ignorance, or a perfectly natural and successful assumption of truth from imposture :—these, and a multitude of the like questions, are precisely of the same nature, however they may be decided, with those with which the historian and the advocate, judges and courts of law, are every day required to deal. On the other hand, whether miracles have ever been, or are ever likely to be, admitted in the administration of the universe, is a question on which it would demand a far more comprehensive knowledge of that administration than we can possibly possess, to justify an à priori decision. That they are possible, is all that is required; and that, no consistent theist can deny. Other difficulties of Christianity, as Bishop Butler has so clearly shown, baffle us on every other hypothesis; they meet us as much in the 'constitution of nature,' as in the pages of revelation; and cannot consistently be pleaded against Christianity without being equally fatal to theism.

'There are two things, we will venture to say, at which the philosophers of some future age will stand equally astonished; the one is, that any man should have been called upon to believe any mystery, whether of philosophy or religion, without a preponderance of evidence of a nature which he can grasp, or on the mere ipse dixit of a fallible creature like himself; the other, that where there is such evidence, man should reject a mystery, merely because it is one.

"This last, perhaps, will be regarded as the more astonishing of the two. That Man-who lives in a dwelling of clay, and looks out upon the illimitable universe through such tiny windows -who stands, as Pascal sublimely says, between 'two infinitudes' -who is absolutely surrounded by mysteries, which he overlooks, only because he is so familiar with them, should doubt a proposition (otherwise well sustained) from its intrinsic difficulty, does not seem very reasonable. But when we further reflect that that very mind which erects itself into a standard of all things, is, of all things, the most ignorant of that which it ought to know best-itself, and finds there the most inscrutable

of all mysteries,-when we reflect that when asked to declare what itself is, it is obliged to confess that it knows nothing about the matter-nothing either of its own essence or its mode of operation, that it is sometimes inclined to think itself material, and sometimes immaterial-that it cannot quite come to a conclusion whether the body really exists, or is a phantom, or in what way (if the body really exists) the intimate union between. the two is maintained,-when we see it perplexed beyond expression, even to conceive how these phenomena can be reconciled -proclaiming it to be an almost equal contradiction to suppose that matter can think, or the soul be material, or a connection maintained between two totally different substances, and yet admitting that one of these must be true, though it cannot satisfactorily determine which,-when we reflect on all this, surely we cannot but feel that the spectacle of so ignorant a Being refusing to believe a proposition, merely because it is above its comprehension, is, of all paradoxes, the most paradoxical, and of all absurdities, the most ludicrous.' (Pages 219, 220.)

• There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little; and, therefore, men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more?'

This is equally true of the suspicions that have reference to things as of persons. I extract a passage bearing upon this point, from the Cautions for the Times:

'Multitudes are haunted by the spectres, as it were, of vague surmises and indefinite suspicions, which continue thus to haunt them, just because they are vague and indefinite, because the mind has never ventured to look them boldly in the face, and put them into a shape in which reason can examine them.

'Now, would it not be an act of great charity towards such persons to persuade them to cast away their unreasonable timidity, and scrutinize such objections, instead of trying to banish them by force? For though, no doubt, some difficulties and objections will always remain that cannot be directly cleared up or answered, yet the vastly greatest number of seeming objections and difficulties can be satisfactorily removed by care. ful examination and increased knowledge; and the experience of this will lead us to be confident that, if we would propor

tionately enlarge our facilities and acquirements (which is what we may hope for in a better world), the rest would vanish also. And, in the meanwhile, it is of great importance to know exactly what they are, lest our fancies should unduly magnify their number and weight; and also in order to make us see that they are as nothing in comparison of the still greater difficulties on the opposite side,-namely, the objections which we should have to encounter, if we rejected Christianity.

'Well, but,' it is said, though that course may be the best for well-read and skilful Divines, it is better not to notice objec tions generally, for fear of alarming and unsettling the minds of plain unlearned people, who had probably never heard of anything of the kind. Let them continue to read their Bible without being disturbed by any doubts or suspicions that might make them uneasy.'

'Now, if in some sea-chart for the use of mariners, the various rocks and shoals which a vessel has to pass in a certain voyage, were to be wholly omitted, and no notice taken of them, no doubt many persons might happen to make the voyage safely, and with a comfortable feeling of security, from not knowing at all of the existence of any such dangers. But suppose some one did strike on one of these rocks, from not knowing-though the makers of the chart did-of its existence, and consequently perished in a shipwreck which he might have been taught to avoid,-on whose head would his blood lie?

And again, if several voyagers came to suspect, from vague rumours, that rocks and shoals (perhaps more formidable than the real ones) did lie in their course, without any correct knowledge where they lay, or how to keep clear of them, then, so far from enjoying freedom from apprehension, they would be exposed to increased alarm-and much of it needless alarm,— without being, after all, preserved from danger.

And so it is in the present case. Vague hints that learned men have objected to such and such things, and have questioned this or that, often act like an inward slow-corroding canker in the minds of some who have never read or heard anything distinct on the subject; and who, for that very reason, are apt to imagine these objections, &c., to be much more formidable than they really are. For there are people of perverse mind, who, really possessing both learning and ingenuity, will employ these

to dress up in a plausible form something which is, in truth, perfectly silly and the degree to which this is sometimes done, is what no one can easily conceive without actual experience and examination.

'It is, therefore, often useful, in dealing even with the unlearned, to take notice of groundless and fanciful theories and interpretations, contained in books which probably most of them will never see, and which some of them perhaps will never even hear of; because many persons are a good deal influenced by reports, and obscure rumours, of the opinions of some supposed learned man, without knowing distinctly what they are; and are likely to be made uneasy and distrustful by being assured that this or that has been disputed, and so and so maintained, by some person of superior knowledge and talents, who has proceeded on 'rational' grounds; when, perhaps, they themselves are qualified by their own plain sense to perceive how ir-rational these fanciful notions are, and to form a right judgment on the matters in question.

'Suppose you were startled in a dark night by something that looked like a spectre in a winding-sheet,-would not he who should bring a lantern, and show you that it was nothing but a white cloth hanging on a bush, give you far better encouragement than he who merely exhorted you to look another way, keep up your heart, whistle, and pass on?''

No avowedly anti-christian advocate is half so dangerous as those professed believers who deprecate and deride all study of evidence-all endeavour to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good,' and to be always 'ready to give a reason of the hope that is in us."

1 See Elements of Logic, Appendix iii.