pressing his most bitter complaints against the uni- forgotten many of the opinions he had renounced, versal spirit of " Bibliolatry" in England. He and because of the remarkable positiveness with finds the attempt to maintain an authoritative reve- which he in most cases adopted for the moment lation, which he thinks so mischievous, to be com- the successive modifications of his views. Even mon to Christian persuasions generally. The the phenomena of his own mind, which seem to ordinary idea of God, he says, is anthropomorphic, have been latterly his only remaining realities, are it is gross idolatry. Nay, he repeatedly laments stated by him in modes quite irreconcilable with the prevalence and power of superstition even each other. For example, during his later life the among the Unitarians. All this affords ground constant tenor of his representation is, that his for thankfulness; and tends to support the hope return to what he terms orthodoxy, and what we that, although the prevalent notions in this coun- should call partial belief, for some years between try may on several points of religion be inexact-1812 and 1818, and again between 1825 and 1832, although a dangerous licence is assumed of dis- was the effect of his religious sympathies, obtaintinguishing between different articles of faith ing for the time the mastery over his understandaccording to their supposed importance to the indi- ing. But at the first of these periods he had vidual mind--although even schism and heresy be taken a directly opposite view; for he embodied too manifest among us-still those habits of mind his sentiments in the prayer which follows:-are deeply rooted in the people which are the fun- "O Lord, my heavenly Father, who knowest damental conditions of Catholic faith-the view, how much of sin still remains in my heart, root out namely, of revelation as something fixed and im- of my mind, I beseech thee, the habits of unbelief mutable, and the conviction of the ethical charac- which I often feel in myself, stirring against the ter of Christian dogmas, and of their indissoluble full persuasion of my understanding on the truth connection with the conduct of life. While this is of thy revelation, and the strong desire of my heart the case, even though the walls should be thrown after that perfect and tranquil assurance in the down, and the foundations laid bare, still their promises of thy Gospel; of which, through the seat in the heart and mind of man is unas- impious conduct of my youth, I have made myself absolutely unworthy." sailed. So much for Mr. Blanco White as a witness to facts. When we turn to the consideration of his claims as a teacher in divine philosophy, we are alike baffled by the weakness, the incongruity, and the perpetual defluxion of his doctrines. He was indeed, during the last ten years of his life, in a kind of moral atrophy, incessantly employed upon mental speculation, but quite incapable of deriving nourishment from that which he devoured with an appetite so ravenous. So that he pined more and more, from year to year: and we can scarcely measure the miserable intensity of his disease when we find him sunk so far below the Unitarian heresy as to write to Mr. Norton, the Unitarian professor, that they differ on essentials; and when the same Mr. Norton, himself a Christian in the Unitarian sense, "in his controversy with Mr. Ripley, had completely excluded him (Mr. Blanco White) from the class of Christians,' ,"6 under the influence of the spirit of orthodoxy. It was indeed no great wonder that any one should have done so, with whom human language was other than a mockery and a fraud; for about the same time Mr. Blanco White was surely preparing himself for emancipation from the last of his fetters, the name of our religion, or he could hardly have written thus: "How superior, in various respects, is Islamism to superstitious Christianity! It may shock many, but I must express my expectation that both the corrupt church Christianity and Islamism itself will disappear in the course of ages, and that the two religions will return to their primitive source -the pure patriarchal and primitive view, the true Christian view, of God and man!' And a little further on he institutes a contrast between Paganism and Christianity, in direct disparagement of the latter. The contradictions with which his work abounds are indescribable. He indeed wonders at his own intellectual consistency'—probably because he had 1 For instance, II., pp. 18, 136, 191, 344; III., p. 380. 2 III., 5 Life, II., p. 361. 7 Ib., III., 277, note. 9 Ib., III., p. 29. He expresses the same sentiments in his "Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism." Now, upon the whole, we believe that there not only may, but must be, very considerable truth in these earlier statements. Because the fact stands upon record that he had passed (between Spain and England) at least ten years in total unbelief. Was it possible that in so long a period he could fail to form skeptical habits of mind; and had they not time to become to a considerable degree inveterate? It must be borne in mind that our intellectual as well as our moral nature is liable to be powerfully affected by habits previously formed. We know, for instance, that a statesman, a divine, and a lawyer, each fairly representing his class, will usually take different views of a subject even where they agree in their conclusion that they must approach it with distinct predispositions. These predispositions are the results of their several employments, which propose to them the several ends of policy, law, and divine truth, and modify their common mental acts accordingly. Much more must this be the case where the operative cause cuts so deep, lies so close to the very root of our moral being, as in a case of total unbelief combined with the exterior acts of the sacerdotal profession. But Mr. Blanco White, so far from seeing in these facts of his history any disqualification, whether total or partial, for his philosophical investigations on moral subjects, rather pleads the tenor of his whole life as his grand claim to credit. Thus he writes to Miss Lin 1836 : "Having gone through almost every modification of the spirit of devotion, except those which bear the stamp of gross extravagance, I must possess a practical knowledge of the artful disguises of superstition, which no natural talent, no powers of thought, can give by means of study and meditation. It is the results of that individual experience, and not any new doctrine or theoretical system, which I have thought it a duty of Christian friendship to give you without disguise." It is true he speaks of experience, not of opin- | only turn to the light within him and follow it, forions; but, in point of fact, thought is mental getting the dark mystery of his existence. Then experience; and if the distinction can be drawn, ithe ceased to realize Christianity as an historical is quite irrelevant here, for the very letter from which the citation is taken is one of pure theory. We say, therefore, that when we find Mr. Blanco White systematically ignoring the effect which ten years of unbelief not only might but must have had upon the habits of his mind, we are driven to conclude that he was, however quick and inquisitive, yet a careless, and therefore a bad psychologist. His writings do not indeed present a system of belief or of unbelief sufficiently definite to be the subject of methodical argument throughout; and they are not less irregular and incongruous in substance than they are in form. They are constant to nothing but to mutability. They present, however, a remarkable number of curious phenomena, and among them that of an intense satisfaction, an ardor of delight, in the Unitarian creed and worship at the period when he formally joined their societies in Liverpool :'— "The service at the Unitarian chapel, Paradise street, has given me the most unmixed delight." (Sunday, Feb. 1st, 1835.) Previously to this he heart and mind. "had no conception of the power which sacred poetry, full of real religious sentiment, and free from the mawkish mysticism which so much abounds in some collections, can exert over the If Christianity is to become a living power in the civilized parts of the world, it must be under the Unitarian form. * * What strikes me most of all is, what I might call the reality, the true connection with life, which this worship possesses. All that I had practised before seemed to lie in a region scarcely within * Here the prayers, the whole worship, is a part of my real life. I pray with my spirit, I pray with my understanding also.' May I not say, that suffering every hour from the bleeding wounds of my heart, those wounds that even my friends touch roughly, I have been already rewarded for acting in conformity with principle!" view. ་ revelation. He ceased to perceive the duty of prayer. He lost his view of the personal immortality of the soul. He placed the idea of the Deity somewhere between the Christian belief and Pantheism, and declared the latter to be the lesser evil. He reminds us of the long descent in the Inferno, from stage to stage, and circle to circle, each lower and each narrower than the last, until it ends in the eternal ice of Giudecca. The accompaniments, as regarded his own peace, of this process of destruction, he has feelingly described in these lines" (1837) :— Brother, or sister, whosoe'er thou art! Couldst thou but see the fang that gnaws my heart, Thou wouldst forgive this transient gush of scorn, Would shed a tear, in pity wouldst thou mourn For one who, 'spite the wrongs that lacerate His weary soul, has never learnt to hate." And we trust that his appeal to pity will meet with a universal response. The claim made on his behalf, that he should be regarded as a standard-bearer of mankind, calls for firm resistance; many of his opinions warrant, and indeed demand from us, a sentiment nothing short of horror; but the man himself, who, if he erred terribly, suffered not less deeply, and who, amidst bewildering error and acute and protracted pain, still cherished many of the sentiments that belong to duty and to piety; he has a right to receive at our hands sympathy and tenderness, and we should leave the dark questions of his destiny there, where alone there is skill to solve them, in He He "The bosom of his Father and his God." There were, it is evident, many signs of nobleness, both in fragments of his opinions, and in his conduct to the last. After he had become a Unitarian, he could still discern "the essential mistake which lies at the bottom of Paley's system;" and when he was sinking yet lower, he did not cease (in 1837) to appreciate the excellence of And there is much more to the same effect. Bishop Butler's theory of human nature. Shall we offer our explanation of the enigma recommended that in philosophical inquiries we which this outburst of devout gratification in con- should be on our guard against selfishness, and nection with the freezing system of the Socinian rule points in opposition to our inclinations. worship appears to present? It is this: the wave- held (1838) that our naturel was unable to comtossed swimmer, gasping for breath, had been cast prehend moral truth beyond its own degree of upon a shore; he had not had time to perceive that purity. He contended that virtue has an authority it was a barren one, and he did not know that an- and obligation" independently of the ideas of our other billow would soon bear him back to sea. His indefinite existence, and of its securing our happimind had rest and satisfaction when he exchanged ness; and even after he had ceased to retain any interminable doubts and the disgusts of a false and determinate belief in our future life, he still clung abstractedly a dishonest position for the definite with happy inconsistency to the idea that in the view, and with the view the confession, of two hands of his Maker he should be safe, and that essential parts of the Catholic faith, the unity of God would certainly reward the disinterested genGod and the mission of Christ. Thus he exulted erosity of a friend. He cherished, with whatever in Unitarianism as a starving garrison make a ban-associations, the love of God, and maintained requet upon a supply of garbage. But this did not and could not last. The narrow measure even of Unitarian dogma was soon felt to be too broad for him. "Blank misgivings, questionings," returned upon him. Skepticism was gorged for the moment; but its appetite too soon revived. Only two years after these raptures he was so perplexed in his view of the being of God, that he said, man could 1 Life, II., p. 92: see also pp. 86, 101, 121, 123, 124. 2 Life, II., p. 283. 12 signation to His will, even when it seems almost im- 9 2 Ib., II. p. 63.. 8 lb., II., p. 282. Ib., II., p. 270. 10 fb., III., p. 25.. 11 Ib., II., p. 300. 13 Ib., III., p. 20. 12 Ib., III., p. 107. 14 Ib., III., p. 107. the supremacy of the higher over the lower parts of our nature, which is not always equally observable in less heterodox writers, and which imparts some tinge of consolation to the melancholy and painful retrospect of his life and opinions. There are also circumstances connected with the discharge of active duty, which should not be forgotten on his behalf. We cannot banish all sentiments of respect for one who twice in his life, for the sake even of erroneous conviction, and after much lingering and hesitation, severed himself from almost every worldly good. There may be persons who are entitled to condemn and upbraid him; but such a voice should not come from among those who live in the lap of bodily and mental ease, who have never experienced his trials, and upon whom God has never laid the weight of his afflictions. When he was bedridden, in his old age and in the solitude of his lodging-solitude not the less sensible because he dwelt in one of the streets of busy Liverpool-his son, who bears the queen's commission, returned from service in India to visit him. It is evident that this period was one of great enjoyment and relief. However, keeping in view his son's professional prospects, he writes to a friend that he has advised him to return to India; and, he adds, "but as I shook him by the hand on Saturday evening, knowing that I should in all probability never see him again, I could hardly contain my anguish within my bosom. Fortunately I was going to bed, where I could give way to my sor row. And he enters in his journal, June 15th, 1839:"Took my last leave of Ferdinand, and felt as if my heart was breaking." He indeed ascribes this paternal act, so tenderly and delicately performed, to his philosophy; we must take leave rather to set it down to the genial instincts of a nature which, speaking according to ordinary usage, we should call evidently an unselfish one, and full of kindly affections. ers of the authenticity of the gospels: I will acknowledge that what is alleged against that authenticity does not rise above conjecture. But, premising that the authenticity would not prove the inspiration of those writings, I ask, have the arguments any higher character than probability in regard to authenticity? Can anything but hypothetical fitness be pleaded for inspiration? Now the orthodox probabilities have very high probabilities against them; the hypothesis is all conjectured. And is it upon such grounds that Heaven can have demanded an absolute certainty of belief in the authenticity and divine authority of the whole Bible? The demand would be monstrous; belief, according to the immutable laws of the human mind, cannot be stronger than its grounds. God, who gave such laws to our souls, could not make it a moral duty for man to act against them." This was written in 1839. He had, however, placed upon record some similar reasoning several years before, and with reference to his first inquiries in England soon after the year 1814. The Scriptures, he there says, are "the highest authority in matters directly connected with Christianity. But even that authority is not entitled to implicit and blind obedience. Why? Because the authenticity of those writings is only an historical probability.' 1 # "The case is exactly parallel to that of the Roman Catholic divines when defending the supremacy and infallibility of Peter and his pretended successors." If "The foundation of certainty must be certain. Divines would make the Eternal Fountain of Reason more illogical than the weakest man. God had intended to dwell miraculously among men in a book, as in an oracle, from which we might obtain infallible answers, he would not have left that first foundation of the intended certainty to probability and conjecture. These quotations, we believe, are sufficient to convey the form and the force of his argument; so that we may at once proceed to state our objections to it. We are surprised at the cool and almost contemptuous manner in which Mr. Blanco White speaks of the most celebrated work of Bishop Butler. After commending the sermons of that great writer. he proceeds: : We have stated that these volumes do not contain any regular system of unbelief; but their author has presented to us very distinctly the particular stumbling-block which first, and also latterly, overthrew his faith, and which appears to have been the disposition to demand an amount, or rather a kind, of evidence in favor of revealed reli-" Butler's Analogy is an inferior work. gion different from that which the nature of the argument of analogy, especially when applied to subject matter and the analogies of our human the Christianity of churches, is totally unsatisfacstate entitles us to expect. Let us then advert to the original form of the delusion to which Mr. Blanco White became a prey on the two greatest occasions of his falling away, separated as they were by an interval of some thirty-five years-a circumstance which he conceives to be confirmatory of the justice of his course-as indeed it is, if the argument itself be a sound one, but which has a significancy of quite an opposite nature if it be intrinsically and radically bad. Here then we will give the notor eudos, as he himself, and that apparently with no small complacency, has stated it, and as he applied it-first to the authority of the church-secondly, to the inspiration of Holy Scripture, and the authenticity of its component parts-the two pillars, in his view, of the system of Catholicity and orthodoxy.3 "I will grant as much as possible to the defend1 Life, III., p. 65. 2 Ib., III., p. 136. Ib., III., p. 145. tory. "3 The Now we must venture to hazard the conjecture that he had never adequately studied this "inferior" work; of which it appears to us that even the several members, apart from the general argument, are so many distinct and permanent contributions to that philosophy which will endure as long as the dispensation of our moral state. In his Introduction, Bishop Butler has given a brief view of probable evidence, its nature, scope, and obligatory power, which we think affords materials for the confutation of the sophistry of the argument before us. Philosophizing upon human action, we must collect its laws from a legitimate induction; and we cordially subscribe to the principle, that " God, who has given certain laws to our souls, could not make it a moral duty for man to act against them." 1 Life, I., 279. 2 Compare Practical and Internal Evidence, p. 109. 3 Life, II., p. 282. Now the argument of Mr. Blanco White appears, | constitution of our minds, is such as to exclude all firstly, to confound belief with knowledge; and, doubt. Human language applies the denominasecondly, to assume that orthodoxy, or the Cath- tion of knowledge to such assent, in cases where olic faith, is connected with belief rather than with this exclusion is entire and peremptory in the action, or with belief apart from action. As to the highest degree. Between that point and the point first: "your evidences," says he, "are not demon-at which a proposition becomes improbable, and a strative; therefore I cannot believe." This is a just understanding inclines to its rejection, an ingross inconsequence. We must entreat the reader finity of shades of likelihood intervene. For exto remember that in the language of metaphysics ample: where the exclusion of doubt is after conthe term probability includes everything short of sideration entire, but yet not peremptory and absolute and infallible, or properly scientific cer- immediate; where it depends upon the compretainty; and with this single caution we proceed to hensive and continuous view of many particulars; reply, demonstration is the appropriate foundation where it rests upon the recollection of a demonof knowledge, but probability of belief. stration, of which the detail has escaped from the memory; where it proceeds from some strong original instinct, incapable of analysis in the last resort: these are all cases in which doubt might be entirely banished, but we should scarcely know whether to say our assent was founded on knowledge or upon belief, the shades of the two, as they are commonly understood, passing into one another; but generally this distinction would be taken between them; that we should call knowledge what does not to our perceptions admit of degree, and what does admit of it we should call belief, although we might in the particular case possess it in the highest degree, so that it should have all the certainty of knowledge; just as we can readily conceive two stations, the one at the head of a pillar, and the other of a stair, yet of equal altitude. Assuredly, we are not about to take refuge from the adversary in pleading the majesty of faith as against reason, in an appeal to theology against experience, in inventing a new law of credibility for religious purposes, which shall be inapplicable to common life. There is indeed a dictum in vogue with some, "where mystery begins religion ends;" which almost provokes the parody, "where antithesis begins common sense ends." But our intention is to charge upon the theory of Mr. Blanco White this intelligible and capital offence; that it, like all the tribe to which it belongs, errs against reason, against experience, against the principles on which the ordinary and uniform practice of mankind in ordinary life is founded; which ordinary and uniform practice, and not the crotchets of a disorderly and unstable understanding, may suffice to show us, with some tolerable clearness, what really are those laws which God has given to our souls, and which it is not only not a duty to infringe, but the very first and highest duty to observe in act, and to maintain in undisputed authority. Now the fundamental proposition on which we rest, and for the proof of which we appeal, without fear of a disputed reply, to the universal practice of mankind, is this: that the whole system of our moral conduct, and much also of our conduct that is not directly moral, rests upon belief First, we hold that it is only by a licence of as contradistinguished from knowledge, and not speech that the term knowledge can be applied to always upon belief in the very highest degree any of our human perceptions. For as nothing which utterly extinguishes doubt, but in every dican in the nature of things, properly speaking, be versity of degree so long as any appreciable porknown, except that which exists, or known in any tion of comparative likelihood remains, although manner other than that exact manner in which it many of these degrees may be hampered with very exists, it follows that knowledge can properly be considerable doubt as they actually subsist in the predicated only of those perceptions which are ab- mind, and many more cases would be open to serisolutely and exactly true; and further, that it can ous doubts if they were subjected to speculative be so predicated only by those who infallibly know examination. And further, that this, which is them to be true. In strictness, therefore, knowl- indisputable in point of fact, is not less irrefragaedge is not predicable by us of any one of our own ble in point of reason; and that any other rule for perceptions; whatever number of them may be the guidance of human life would be not irrelitrue, we do not infallibly know of any one of them gious, but irrational in the extreme. We take that it is true. Of all the steps in the operations first a case of the highest practical certainty. of our mental faculties, there is not one at which How do we know that the persons who purport to it is abstractedly impossible that error should inter- be our parents, brothers and sisters, really are vene; and as this is not impossible, knowledge, what they pass for? It is manifest that the posithe certain and precise correspondence of the per- tive evidence producable in each case falls far cipient and the thing perceived, cannot be cate-short of a demonstrative character; nay more, gorically asserted. If, therefore, without knowl- is perfectly well known that in many cases these edge in its scientific sense there can be no legiti- relations have been pretended where they did not mate belief, this wide universe is a blank, and exist, and the delusion long maintained. And yet nothing can be believed: nothing theological, no- every man carries in his mind a conviction upon thing moral, nothing social, nothing physical. In the subject, as it regards himself, utterly exclua word, abstract certainty, in this dispensation, sive of doubt. And those who should raise doubts we scarcely can possess, though we may come in- upon it, in consequence of the want of mathematidefinitely near it and knowledge and certainty, cal certainty, would be deemed fitter for Bedlam and all similar expressions as practical terms must than for the pursuit of philosophical inquiries. be understood not absolutely but relatively-rela- Here then is an absolute contradiction, supplied tively that is to the limit imposed by the nature of by that universal conviction and practice of man our faculties, and this not with regard to revela-kind, from whence by a legitimate induction we tion only, but throughout the whole circle of our experience. Next to this abstract certainty, comes that kind of assent to propositions which, according to the it infer the true laws of our nature, to the theorems of Mr. Blanco White, or perhaps rather to his grand inference from them, namely, that the demand made upon men for the reception of Chris rule. In general we do not imagine that even the nascent belief of Christians is seriously troubled with substantive doubts; but it clearly has not, and cannot have, nor have the great majority of our most rational acts in common life, a foundation in that philosophical completeness of conviction, which is an essential condition of the permanent and absolute freedom from doubt. But in point of fact, the formation of this mature belief, the mode of dealing with temptation when it arises in the form of doubt, is a high portion of the discipline of the soul; all that we need here lay down is this: to hold that an absolute intellectual certainty belongs of necessity to the reception of Christianity, is a proposition altogether erroneous. tianity is greater than can be warranted by the rea- divided. This, however, is the exception, not the sons on which it purports to rest. But again, there are numberless instances in which a very great practical uncertainty prevails, and yet where we must act just as we should if there were no doubt at all. A man with many children will prepare them all for after-life, though probably one or more will die before attaining maturity. A tells B that his house is on fire; A may have motives for deceiving him, but B, if he be a rational man, quits the most interesting occupation, and goes to see. But there is no end to the multiplication of instances; let any man examine his own daily experience, and he will find that its whole tissue is made up of them; or, in the words of that "inferior" work of Bishop Butler, "to us probability is the very guide of life. Mr. Blanco White might indeed have received very useful lessons on this subject from an ingenious and really philosophical brochure of Archbishop Whately's, entitled "Historic Doubts concerning the Existence of Napoleon Bonaparte," in which he shows how open to abstract objections are the grounds upon which, as individuals, we receive facts even of common notoriety. 991 ther. Could our whole being, except the sheer intellect, be laid in abeyance, such a notion would at least be intelligible; but in the mean time, life and its acts proceed : We shall note one other and gross error, as it appears to us, in this part of the philosophy of Mr. Blanco White. The stages of mental assent and dissent are almost innumerable; but the alternatives of action proposed by the Catholic faith are two only. There is a narrow way and a broad one; in the one or the other of these every man, according to his testimony, must walk. It will not do to say, I see this difficulty about the ChrisNow it will not be enough for the opponent to tian theory, so I cannot adopt it; and that difficulretort that probability will do for small matters, ty about the anti-Christian theory, so I cannot embut that in great ones, and especially in what re-brace that; I will wait and attach myself to neigards the salvation of the soul, we must have demonstration. For the law of credibility, upon which our common and indeed universal practice is founded, has no more dependence upon the magnitude of the objects to which it is applied than have the numbers of the arithmetical scale, which embrace motes and mountains with exactly the same propriety. It is not the greatness or minuteness of the proposition, but the balance between likelihood and unlikelihood, which we have to regard whenever we are called to determine upon assent or rejection. It is true, indeed, that when the matter is very small, the evil of acting against probability will be small also. But this shows that in a practical view the obligation of the law becomes not less but more astringent as the rank of the subject in question rises; because the best and most rational method of avoiding a very great evil, or of realizing a very great good, has a much higher degree of claim upon our consideration and acceptance in proportion to the degree of the greatness of the object in view. E mangia, e bee, e dorme, e veste panni :1 and not only as to these functions, but also our moral habits are in the course of formation or destruction; character receives its bias; there are and these matters cannot be wholly nor at all appetites to be governed, powers to be employed; adjourned. The discharge of the daily duties of the supposition that we have a Creator and a our position absolutely must be adapted either to Redeemer, or to the supposition that we have not. There is no intermediate verdict of" not proven,' which leaves the question open: the question to us is, Is there such proof as to demand obedience? and there are no possible replies in act, whatever there may be in word, except aye and no. The lines of conduct are but two, and our liberty is limited to the choice between them. Here it is, therefore, that credibility, as applied to the belief of Christianity, we perceive the stringent obligation of the law of entailing moral responsibilities, upon the generaupon man. On a subject purely abstract or not tion of the present structure of the world by fire or tion; But, next, is Mr. Blanco White correct in say ing that the Christianity of churches demands from all its disciples, at all stages of their progress, an absolute and mathematical conviction? Where did he learn so severe a theology? Hooker has shown in his sermon on the certainty and water, upon the theory of vibrations in optics, upon perpetuity of faith in the elect, of which the doc- might have taken refuge in a philosophical susthe system of Copernicus or of Descartes, we trine is by no means lax, that true faith does not imply the exclusion of all doubt whatever. He pense, while the evidence fell short of demonstraeven says, speaking of revealed truths, "of them the error of withholding assent is not a fatal one; and even after the proof has been completed, at some time who doubteth not?" Bishop Pear- but the belief which Christianity enforces, it enson defines Christian belief to be an assent to that forces as the foundation of daily conduct, as the which is credible, as credible. But clearly, much framework into which all acts, all thoughts, all that is on the whole credible is open to a degree hopes, affections and desires, are to be cast, and by of doubt; although it could not be credible unless Whatever it the doubt were outweighed upon a comparison by which they must be moulded. the evidences in its favor. What, again, is the teaches, for example, concerning the work and the meaning of "Lord, I believe; help thou mine un- but as holding forth Him whose steps we are person of our Lord, it teaches not in the abstract, belief?" There is, in such a case, a conflict to follow, in whom our whole trust is to be within the mind: it is divided, though unequally reposed, with whom we are to be vitally incorporated, and whom accordingly we must needs 1 Inferno, xxxiii. 141. 1 Introduction to the Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 4. 2 Works, III., p. 585, ed. Keble, 1836. |