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Tempted to Unbelief.

BY

REV. E. F. BURR, D. D.,
AUTHOR OF "ECCE CCELUM," " PATER MUNDI," "AD FIDEM.!

"The Christian has gpeatly the advantage of the unbe
liever—having everything to gain and nothing to lose." Byron.

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY,
150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK.

DEDICATION.
To my Brother— my companion in col
lege, in foreign travel, in the . Christian
ministry, and in a desire to succor those
who are tempted to unbelief.

'693

COPYRIGHT, 1882,
BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.

Preface.

The following lines, from the pen of an emi
nent scholar, express very forcibly all that I care
to say in the way of preface to the present volume.
" The shapes that frowned before the eyes
Of the early world have fled,
And all the life of earth and skies,
Of streams and seas, is dead.
" But ah ! is naught save fable slain
In this new realm of thought ?
Or has the shaft Primeval Truth
And Truth's great Author sought ?
" Yes, wisdom now is built on sense ;
We measure and we weigh,
We break and join, make rare and dense,
And reason God away.
" The wise have probed this wondrous world,
And searched the stars, and find
All curious facts and laws revealed,
But no Almighty Mind.
" From thinking dust we mould the spheres,
And shape earth's wondrous frame:
If God had slept a million years,
All things would be the same.

PREFACE.
" Oh, give me back a world of life;
Something to love and trust,
Something to quench my inward strife,
And lift me from the dust.
"I cannot live with nature dead,
'Mid laws and causes blind,
Powerless on earth or overhead
To trace all-guiding Mind.
" Better the instinct of the brute
That feels its God afar,
Than reason to his praises mute,
Talking with every star.
" Better the thousand deities
That swarmed in Greece of yore,
Than thought that scorns all mysteries,
And dares all depths to explore.
" Better is childhood's thoughtless trust
Than manhood's daring scorn ;
The fear that cf eeps along the dust
Than doubt in hearts forlorn.
" And knowledge, if it cost so dear,
If such be reason's day,
I '11 lose the pearl without a tear,
And grope my star-lit way.
" And be the toils of wisdom cursed
If such the meed we earn ;
If freezing pride and doubt are nursed,
And faith forbid to burn."

CONTENTS.

i.
For Whom   page 7
II.
A Confession of Faith     13
III.
Real Unbelief ?  26
IV.
Look Before Leaping  36
V.
Give Me — Geometry  — 57
VI.
Hermes Trismegistus    -- 72
VII. .
Which to Choose  87

6 CONTENTS.
VIII.
Looking to the Possible  -  106
IX.
-Consulting Experience  120
X.
Sample Science   -  -. 153
XI.
Guilty or Not Guilty?  -  184
XII.
Parley the Porter  -  -  195
XIII.
What Do They Mean?  -  210

Tempted to Unbelief.

i.
FOR WHOM.

ThiO following pages address themselves not
so much to pronounced unbelievers as to those
who as yet are only tempted to unbelief.
This latter class, in our time, is very large, is
comparatively promising, and can be reasoned
with from broader and easier premises than can
those who have fully gone over to the enemy —
their enemy as well as ours.
Some one has said that Doubt is the Devil of
the 19th Century. The truth of this statement
is not quite as clear as its strength; but however
doubtful it may be whether our time is entitled
to the bad preeminence among the ages that is
assigned it, it is by no means doubtful whether
unbelief exists among us in large proportions,
and is exceedingly aftive, ingenious, and varied
in its efforts to still enlarge itself. Its name is

8 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
Proteus. Almost everybody is approached with
its venturesome suggestions. This goes almost
without saying among all who are reasonably
well acquainted with current speech and lit
erature. They know that unbelief gossips in
newspapers, tells stories in magazines, writes
book-notices for reviews, holds symposia in quar
terlies, teaches in text-books and summer con-<
ventions, itinerates as male and female lecturers
from one end of the land to the other. They
know that it has a place on the staffs of nearly
all the great secular journals, and in the Faculties
of nearly all the larger institutions of learning;
while it quite' monopolizes the administration of
not a few of these Great Powers, especially in
Europe. They know that sometimes it even
ventures to stand in pulpits, and instruct, from
theological chairs, and argue from under the
mitres of bishops; and, having made a constit
uency for itself, defies ecclesiastical discipline.
They know that it is daring, unscrupulous, poly
glot — suiting various speech deftly to various
classes; giving primers to children, popular sci
ence to the million, and Herbert Spencers to the
few; querying, guessing, insinuating, asserting,
arguing, dogmatizing, philosophizing, and occa
sionally blaspheming, according to circumstances.
Further, they know that it is being annually

FOR WHOM. 9
reinforced in this country by armies of unbeliev
ers from abroad, from homespun nihilists up to
noted professors wearing the togas of science.
This means a sick air — so sick that one cannot
venture to send out his child into the world with
out first providing him with a respirator, or
vaccinating him for unbelief. It is fortunate
that such preventives can be had ; and very
unfortunate that so few, even those of weakly
constitution, can be persuaded to use them. So
the epidemic rages. Some are dying, others are
critically sick, and still others, a vastly larger
class, are as yet only debilitated by the malarious
air whose fungous spores, in the form of interro
gation points, are being freely drawn in at every
breath. "What about the ancestral faith?"
The right answer does not come back as clear
and ringing as it could once have done. The
invalids speak in a low voice. Their words
hesitate. Their very breath is asthmatic. Unless
something can be done for them they will in
time come to have no breath at all.
What can be done ? To sift out these death-
germs from the atmosphere would be as impos
sible as the philosophers have found it to sift
out life-germs from common air. Yet there is
help. See the exact, situation. Not yet com
mitted to unbelief, though variously tempted to
Tempted to Unbelief. 2

io TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
it; not yet fully under the malarious influences,
though ailing; not yet benighted, though looking
toward sunset; not yet away from Christian
ground, though facing and pacing toward its
boundaries; not yet fallen, though faltering; not
yet veterans in the downward road, though be
ginners; not yet vacated of God and the Bible,
though these are approaching the door, and per
haps setting hand to the latch — this is how mat
ters stand with them. Consequently, in appeal
ing to them we are not confined to the narrow
premises from which we are compelled to address
confirmed unbelievers. Christian views of things
are still of some account. What unbelief is and
does, as seen from the Scriptural point of view,
still goes for something, perhaps for much. This
state of things may not long continue; but, for
the present, the ancestral ideas, the believing
forms of thought, the churchly testimonies and
nurtures, have still a degree of sacredness and
authority — the incipient Hseckels are not ex-
aftly ready to cast off the venerable traditions,
and to concede that Nature is godless and king-
less and fatherless; that we have no Heavenly
Friend, no Almighty Saviour, and no divine
message; that we have monkeys for our parents,
and seaweeds and stones for grandparents; that
we are mere lumps of matter, and die. like dogs,.

FOR WHOM. n
and live again only in our successors, and put
forth our vices and virtues, our sorrows and joys
by grim mechanical necessity; that life, will,
thought, affecTion, holiness, and sin are nothing
but matter-motions convertible into gravity,
electricity, and the like; that yonder train of
cars with its Apollyon locomotive and living
freight of fair women and stately men, with all
their plans and hopes and fears, as well as yonder
locomotive suns with their planetary trains and
orderly astronomies, were all evolved out of a fire
mist solely by its own unthinking force and laws;
I say they are not quite ready to accept all this
as so much science.
This is very promising. It is almost the sun
of Aus terlitz. Surely a class of persons so large,
so new to the wrong, and so broadly approach
able, should have great and prompt attention
from the friends of religion. I say, prompt. It
is soon or never with most of these people. Cars
moving down so steep a grade soon get beyond
being stopped. And such as rush on to the
bottom are commonly so broken by the fall as to
be beyond repair. If not, who will undertake to
draw them to the top of the hill again? But
these BEGINNERS in the downward way, with
but little momentum as yet, can be drawn back
and rescued with comparative ease. Let them

12 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
be laid hold of before they go further and fare
worse. Show them how in the hands of unbelief
half-truths are made to do the work of whole
falsehoods; and how the sowing of doubts is the
sowing of dragons' teeth which must ere long
sprout into armed-and hostile men. Is there not
some spear of such heavenly temper that it can
touch the ' ' toad squat at the ear of Eve, ' ' and
make it to appear the Satan that it is, before the
temptation proceeds further, and the tempter
enters at the mouth ?
Obsta principiis, has come to be almost as
good English as it is Latin; and it is quite as
good philosophy as either.

A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 13

II.

A CONFESSION OF FAITH.
Ships show their colors. Politicians define
their position. It may be well for me to do the
same thing more fully than I have yet done — to
show at the outset from what point of view I am
about to write, and to what I am anxious to keep
or win the reader.
Shall I accept the Apostles' Creed as my con
fession of faith ? Yes — as far as it goes.
Shall I accept the following words of Jean
Jacques Rousseau ?
"Imagine all your philosophers, ancient and
modern, to have first exhausted their eccentric
systems of forces, of chance, of fatality, of neces
sity, of atoms, of an animated world, of a living
matter, of materialism of every kind; and that,
after them all, the illustrious Clarke enlightens
the world by announcing finally the Being of
beings, and the Disposer of events; with what
universal admiration, with what unanimous ap
plause would not this new system have been
received — so grand, so consoling, so sublime, so
fitted to exalt the soul, to give a basis to virtue,

14 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF..
and at the same time so striking, so luminous, so
simple, and, as it seems to me, offering fewer
things incomprehensible, to the human mind than
one finds of absurdities in every other system. I
said to myself, The insoluble objections are com
mon to all, because the human mind is too lim
ited to explain them; they prove nothing against
any one in particular; but what a difference in
the direct, proofs ! Ought not, therefore, that
scheme alone to be preferred which explains
everything, and has no more difficulties than the
rest? The gospel has marks of truth so great,
so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that the in
ventor of it would be more astonishing than the
hero. ' '
These words remind me of another testimony
which Satan himself is said to have given to
Jesus: "I know thee who thou art, the Holy
One of God. ' ' Both testimonies set forth forcibly
what I hold to be pure truth, though it comes
through unclean channels; and I accept both for
my banner— as far as they go. And they certainly
go a long way.
And yet not as far as the truth, in my view,
warrants, or as the needs of the time require.
Let me explain.
In these days men are chiefly tempted to
unbelief in the name of Science. Kepler, Boyle,

A CONFESSION OF FAITH. _s
Bacon, Newton, Pascal, Linnaeus, Cuvier, Davy,
Faraday, Brewster, Agassiz, and others of like
solid and incontestible renown as scientists, were
staunch believers; and every one of them would
have subscribed in a bold hand to this deliberate
judgment of Sir Isaac Newton, "No sciences are
better attested than the religion of the Bible."
But latterly not a few who know not Joseph
have come forward into the places of these men.
Speaking with the voice and port of science,
they invite the people to cast away their Bibles
and their God. Says one of these tempters,
"Science condudts God to the frontiers with
honor, thanks him for his provisional services,
and politely bows him away. ' ' This is one view
of the relation of science to religion. Let me
give another equally outspoken and considerably
less profane. And this shall be my complete
confession of faith — the one which seems called
for by our time, and which will be found every
where underlying the thought of the present
volume. WHAT IS SCIENCE?
As everybody knows, this word has long been
popularly used with great looseness. It is a
highly respectable word, sounds remarkably well,
and consequently people have been very free in
giving it to their favorite notions of whatever

1 6 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
sort. The quack calls his notions about the
treatment 'of disease the science of medicine; the
small politician dignifies his ideas of government
with no less name than the science of politics;
another feels the bumps on heads, and insists ou
speaking of the science of phrenology. The
same loose use of the word is not uncommon even
among scholars. Go where you will, you will
find capable and accomplished men giving it
freely to mere plausibilities, and indeed to spec- ,
ulations that cannot yet be said to be plausible.
They will tack on to approved fa6ts and princi
ples fanciful notions about them, having more or
less verisimilitude, and then quietly give the
dignified name of science to the whole collection.
There are sciences, uniformly treated as such, a
very considerable part of which consists of per
petually shifting queries and fancies. Germany
raises a crop of what she calls scientific do6trines
not quite as often as she does a crop of grapes,
crushes them as regularly, bottles their essence in
books, stows them away in cellars and attics for
another generation, or exports them; and then
coolly sets about raising a new crop.
Were you not once at a scientific convention ?
It was not the annual meeting of the British
Association, though it might have been. You
were astonished. A young man, never before

A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 17
present at a session of professional scientists, in
deed fresh from the study of logic, and especially
of that sedtion that treats of the importance of
accurately defining our terms, you were quite un
prepared to find such use of language current in
such a place. And you went home and wrote
(did you not ?) to a friend, without a thought of
its ever being published : "I have made a dis
covery. I have found nebulae in unlooked-for
quarters; and they are not aggregations of stars,
but genuine fog. I have found that philosophy
and science mean, 'As you like it' — that these
names are shining fog-banks which can be made
to take almost any shape, and to spread them
selves so as to cover almost any notion you may
please. Oh, that these Magi in long robes knew
better where their Babe is to be found — that they
had a less vague and unreasonable idea of what
science is ! It would save them and us a world
of trouble. I do not object to teachers of science
having their suppositions and speculations, or to
their telling them to audiences; but 'let him that
hath a dream tell it as a dream.' I objecl to his
calling his dream science. Especially do I object
to his putting it in the foreground, and making all
things else mere mirrors to refle<_t it. In such case
I indignantly exclaim with Goethe, 'Tell us what
you know; I have guesses enough of my own.' "
Tempted to Unbelief. 7>

18 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
Doubtless, if we allow ourselves to use the
word science after such a fashion, there is a very
varied and irreconcilable confli6l between it and
religious faith. Not only does it condu6t Chris
tianity and God to the frontiers and dismiss them
as no longer wanted, but it also condu6ts into
banishment with them the common sense and
consciences of mankind and the principles of
common morals; for all these have been opposed
in the name of science. A very brilliant train to
take their departure ! Can the world afford to
let them go without asking the would-be con
ductor for his credentials ?
If science is a well-considered digest of the
leading assured truths in any great branch of
knowledge, then is there not only no confli6l
between it and religion, but religion is itself a
science. This is the First Article of my confes
sion of faith. I not only hold with Voltaire that
' ' if God did not exist it would be necessary to
invent him;" but also with Descartes and New
ton that the main religious doftrines rest on as
good and commanding a foundation of evidence
as the most vaunted of the physical sciences, or
even the mathematical. To be sure our means
of knowing them are not differentials and inte
grals and galvanic batteries — but what of that?
Intuition, observation, experience, testimony, in-

A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 19
duction — these, in the last analysis, are the means
by which we know all the secular sciences; and
by the same means we know all those more ulti
mate principles of natural religion — which, prac
tically, all mankind have agreed in accepting — as
well as those main-points of Christian dodtrine
held in common by all Christian denominations.
As to system, geometry itself is not set in more
precise and capital order than are the chief reli
gious principles in the great Christian Confes
sions. So to us these Confessions, in the great features
common to them all, express a science ; and all
its capable teachers, especially those of liberal
culture, are as much scientists and experts as are
professional chemists or astronomers. These are
professors, it may be, in that school for youth
which is called a college ; they are professors in
that wider school which includes in its classes all
ages and cultures, and very likely the secular
professors themselves. Only they call their lec
tures sermons, and try to make them as plain and
pradtical as possible. Does this make them
unscientific ? Perhaps we have heard of such a
thing as Applied Chemistry, or even Applied
Mathematics. We have also our Applied Theol
ogy- ' ' But see — into how many disputing se dis you

_o TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
religionists are divided!" I was once present
at a Scientific Congress. It was not the illustri
ous French Academy — though it might have been,
so far as the matter in hand is concerned. The
members mainly agreed in Chemistry, but at once
split up into several denominations the moment
the papers read began to pass behind the fadts
into the philosophy of them. In Geology, they
were mostly Uniformitarians, and held to an
unsolid earth, but still were divided into several
conflidting schools. They all held unwaveringly
to Astronomy in the main, but if any one sup
poses that they were a unit in their astronomical
theories and speculations, he is very wide of the
truth. They could have fought till this time
over many an ancient bone, had not circumstan
ces choked them apart — over the condition of
Jupiter, the Saturnian rings, the Intra-Mercurial
and extra Neptunian planets, the cometic and
solar theories, the chemical and mechanical his
tory of our system, the Nebulae and spedtroscopic
findings, and even the ultimate foundations of
that great instrument of celestial research, the
Calculus. And as to what is called Metaphysi
cal science, ah me ! there were signs of almost
as many schools as there were persons. If lists
could have been set and trumpets sounded to the
charge, we should have splintered many a lance,

A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 21
and perhaps finally run each other through and
through. As it was, we contented ourselves
with dogmatizing, and looking daggers at each
other. And I could not well help feeling that it
ill becomes secular scientists, from out their glass
houses, to cast stones at religion on account of
its many sedts. We do dispute somewhat over
certain theological points, I confess; but do Tyn
dall and Bastian, Darwin and Wallace never
dispute with each other? We do sometimes
dogmatize over our Bibles; but if we exterminate
all dogmatists, or only the fiercer breed of them,
we shall have to go without the pale of the
Christian Church, and even into the citadel of
the mathematicians. So, my friend, if you are
ever tempted to stumble at Presbyterians, Epis
copalians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and so
on; also, at the faculty some believers have of
vigorous and triumphant assertion without at
tempt to prove (witness this chapter, which is
only vexillum proponenduni), I beg you will
allow me to introduce you to my very distin
guished friend, Professor Joseph Louis Lagrange,
President of the Institute of France, who will
assure you that this sort of procedure is stridtly
according to scientific usage.
If Religion is a science as well as an art, what
is its relation to other sciences ? Plainly, it is the

22 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
supreme science. This is the Second Article of
my Creed.
If the main dodtrines of Religion are true,
then, beyond controversy, there is no system of
truth in the whole round of the astronomical
heavens to compare with it in importance. Just
think of it — God is, has given a copious written
Revelation to men, holds them responsible in an
other life for their, condudl in this, yet is loving
as well as righteous, has made in his own person
atonement for sin, will pardon it and even open
the gates of an endless heaven to all men on cer
tain reasonable conditions ; if such seed-fadts are
as scientific as the high priest of modern science
affirmed them to be, then what a science Religion
is ! It certainly has no peer. It certainly is more
than Bacon's Scientia Scientiarum. This most
ancient of all the sciences deals with grander sub*
jedts and has grander corollaries than any other.
It is beyond telling the most useful — having
closer relations to human happiness, both here
and hereafter; being, in fadt, the only science
that nobody can do without, in which everybody
needs to be an expert, and which comes into play
at all times and in all places— true science for the
million. Without it the circle of the sciences is
a broken circuit, and so unable to transmit the
currents of moral power through the community ;

A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 23
nay, it is the only science that generates those
spiritual dynamics by which alone society can be
regenerated, or even kept from becoming putrid.
It is not enough to claim for such a sacred science
as this an equal standing among secular sciences.
It is queen by Divine right. From the very na
ture of the case, it has unlimited commission to
govern — in domestic life, in business, in civil
affairs, and also in the whole constellation of
Arts and Sciences. I say Sciences ; for plainly it
has right to give law to scholarly researches of
every sort as well as to the buying and selling
of the world ; has the right to sit regnant in the
laboratory, behind telescopes and microscopes, and
even on the differentials and integrals of the math
ematician, as well as in the daily intercourse of
man with man. So it ought to get queenly atten
tion and honor. It ought to have the chief place
in education, instead of the no-place which some
would give. Alas for the Republic when our
common schools are swept clean of Bibles and our
colleges of Christian science ! And no scientist
should be half as zealous in studying or teaching
his Botany or his Astronomy as he is in studying
or teaching that higher science which alone sanc
tifies and saves.
So thought the scholarly fathers of New Eng
land. To such ideas their whole lives were ad-

24 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
justed — and their learning. Religion, both as a
doctrine and as a pradtice, was before and behind
and in the midst of their studies. To them no
lore was so real, so high, as sacred lore. The chief
use to which they put every scholarly research
and attainment was to manifest the being and
ways of God ; to illustrate religion, promote its
reception, and enforce its decrees ; in short, to
make them serviceable as handmaids to Religion,
and to do for it what the auxiliary verbs do to
Grammar. This, they considered, was according
to the normal relations of things. Religion was
the natural centre of all other truth, and espe
cially of the secular sciences. These planets must
revolve about, be subordinated to, and get light
and warmth and beauty from this sun. Else they
will roll in darkness. Else they will become
globes of ice. Else they will fly off in tangents ;
become nomads and Bedouins at that, plundering
away the best hopes and resources of mankind ;
become as irregular and capricious as lunatic com
ets were once supposed to be, and to be feared as
they were feared when ' ' from their tails they
shook pestilence and war;" and at last shatter
each other and the world to pieces.
Were not the fathers right? Agnosticism is
"a doctrine of despair." As Tennyson sings,

A CONFESSION OF FAITH.

25

" And the suns of the limitless Universe sparkled and shone
in the sky,
Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light
was a lie —
Bright as with deathless hope — but, however they sparkled
and shone,
The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of
woe like our own —
No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth below,
A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe.
"Oh, we poor orphans of nothing — alone on that lonely
shore —
Born of the brainless Nature who knew not that which she
bore!
Trusting no longer that earthly flower would be heavenly
fruit-
Come from the brute, poor souls — no souls — and to die with
the brute —
" Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of
pain,
If every man die for ever, if all his griefs are in vain,
And the homeless planet at length will be wheeled through
the silence of space,
Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race,
When the worm shall have writhed its last, and its last bro
ther-worm will have fled
From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth
that is dead ?

Tempted to Unbelief.

26 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
III.
REAL UNBELIEF?
MEN often think their bodily condition worse
than it is. They think they have the consump
tion, or the dropsy, or organic disease of the heart ;
but the disease is imaginary. Too much leisure,
nervous apprehension, a morbid fancy, reading
"Every Man his own Doctor" — such things have
misled their judgments, and they torment them
selves and their friends with fears and expenses
for which there is not the least occasion.
Similar mistakes are sometimes made in re
gard to the mind. Who has not heard people
say, and sometimes honestly, that they ' ' have no
talents," especially in certain given directions?
"They have no faculty for expressing them
selves." "Their mathematical, or classical, or
poetical, or mechanical ability amounts to noth
ing." But, after a time, circumstances put them
under pressure, and lo, it is found that they can
talk and write and translate and reckon after a
manner they had thought impossible. The Power
was merely "sleeping in the hinder part of the
ship on a pillow." Who has not heard people

REAL UNBELIEF? ?7
say, and say honestly, that they "have no feel
ing," when in fact they are in a state of profound
religious interest — an interest so intense as to pic
ture itself in every feature and loudly summon
the sympathy of the most careless observer ? The
passion of love, in its earlier stages, is often not
recognized by the subjects of it. Indeed it some
times acquires vast strength before circumstances
so reflect the light upon it as to bring it distinctly
to the notice of the heart where it has hidden.
The man is surprised. He had no idea of the
state of his affections. And should circumstances
make it necessary to suppress his affection, he
would find himself called to one of the severest
struggles of his life.
Have yonder men any religious faith ? They
say not; they think not. They are infidels, athe
ists, skeptics — recognized as such in the commu
nity, confidently speaking in the interests of unbe
lief, perhaps priding themselves on their attitude,
and proclaiming it with full voice to the four
winds. It may be that they are as solidly unbe
lieving as they think themselves. That there are
intellectual unbelievers in God and the Scriptures
does not admit of question ; and it is just possible
that these men are among the number. But the
contrary is also possible, nay, -probable, despite
the thunder and lightning of their strong asser-

28 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
tions and impressions to the contrary. There is
such a thing as a latent faith, just as there is latent
heat or moisture. One would hardly think there
could be any heat in that wintry air that cuts like
a knife; but apply to it a certain pressure, and
you will bring a spark out of its arctic bosom.
One can hardly conceive of any water being hid
den away in that droughty summer air ; but sud
denly compact it by your cold or your hydrostatic
press, and you shall press out of it the drops of
rain or dew. Was it not mere white paper? It
had been in his possession for many years, and he
had never thought it anything else. But lo, one
day, as he stood by the fire, certain written lines
made their appearance. He read, and found him
self in possession of a secret which had really been
his, in a latent state, for years.
I have no doubt it is so with most nominal
unbelievers of Christian lands. They are pos
sessed of a latent faith. Certain conceivable cir
cumstances would press it out into manifestation.
In my judgment, founded on extensive observa
tion as well as on a priori grounds, there are very
few, if any, of the so-called unbelievers who
would not, if all the coverings were taken off
from their hearts, reveal at the bottom a view of
God and the Scriptures as having at least a bal
ance of likelihood in their favor.

REAL UNBELIEF '. 29
If you bring a substance to a chemist that he
may tell you its constituents, very likely he will
be able to announce at sight what its main ele
ments are. But if you want to know whether
there is not in it some small trace of ammonia, he
cannot answer till after a delicate chemical analy
sis. Such small measures do not at once report
themselves to his senses ; so it is only after he has
gone through certain disintegrating processes in
his laboratory that he is able to meet your in
quiry, and inform you that the substance contains
not only a small percentage of ammonia, but also ,
a little iodine and other elements whose presence
it had not occurred to him to suspect. Yet you
can hardly be said to be surprised ; it is so com
mon a thing for a careful scientific examination
to bring to light unsuspected fadts. And it ought
not to surprise us should careful inquest into un
believers about us discover many things that do
not report themselves easily at the surface — and
among them a religious faith of the intellectual
sort, of which neither others nor themselves were
aware. The fadt is, the fundamental doctrines of reli
gion — which proclaim the existence of Deity, of
messages from him, and of a great future for the
human soul depending on character and conduct
in the present, are doctrines of humanity, being al-

30 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
most universally consented to by the race. How
ever we may account for it, there is a strong ten
dency among men to believe in such things. This
strong tendency is not easily cast out of any man ;
it may well be doubted whether it is ever thor
oughly expelled. Doubtless men sometimes think
themselves, as well as are thought by others, to
have quite rid themselves of the current religious
belief. They make large professions of the total
ity and untrembling stability of their unbelief ; to
hear them talk, one would think no granite moun
tain could be firmer; but lo, some revival passes
over the community like a summer shower, and
the mountain melts away as if but a fog-bank,
without the slightest assault from argument; or
some great sorrow comes, that refuses to be con
soled save by the ancient faith; or death itself
knocks at the door, or seems to do so, and the
startled soul, taking a new inventory of its pos
sessions, finds, as did Volney and Voltaire and
Paine, that its supposed unbelief is all hollow,
and can ring out most dismal knells under the
rappings of those skeleton fingers.
Faith ! Yes, it has long been covered up and
laid away as if dead, without tears or ceremonial,
in some dark cave of the soul; but it turns out to
have been a case of premature interment ; the
noise of the body falling into ruins awakens the

REAL UNBELIEF? 31
sleeper, and the atheist calls for help on the God
whose existence he has roundly denied, and the
infidel seeks comfort from the Bible which he has
declared a tissue of fabrications, and begs succor
at the hands of Jesus, whom he has denounced as
an impostor. Did not these men for years give
tokens of being wholly without faith ? But death
is an analyst whose crucible and galvanic shocks
give wonderfully delicate findings, and show in
the soul the presence of elements not suspected
before. Ah, Volney, who would have thought it of
you ! Have you not published to all the world
in your Travels, your Ruins, your Lectures on
History, that it is a sure thing that Christianity is
all imposture and God himself a clumsy fabrica
tion of priests; and expressed your wonder that
any sensible man could for a moment entertain
such transparent absurdities ? And in the salons
and cafi_s and normal schools of Paris your tongue
has blasphemed as boldly as your pen. Nay,
only two hours ago, when your vessel was pleas^
antly skimming the waters of Lake Erie — not a;
cloud to be seen — you were filling the ears of all
who could be brought to listen, with sneers and
curses against. God and Christ and Scripture as
so many demonstrated delusions. Especially, you
were not more sure of your own existence than

32 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
you were of the non-existence of a personal God.
So you would have your hearers think. So you
thought yourself. But what do we hear now !
The sky has darkened, the wind has veered and
risen to a gale, the vessel has lost both masts and
rudder, and now the waves are charging on the
wreck in exulting thunders, like long lines of
foaming battle steeds following each other in end
less succession quite to the horizon, and bathing
with their white foam the whiter faces of despair
ing men and women. Volney thinks it death. It
will turn out to be only death's next neighbor.
But he does not know it as yet, and — is it possi
ble? the philosopher on his knees ! Is it possible?
this same confident atheist calling on God for
help, with streaming eyes and uplifted hands
exclaiming, "O my God, my God, what shall I
do!" Ah, Monsieur Volney, you have made a nota
ble discovery. You were not quite as sure of
no-God as you thought. Deep down in your
soul all this while, even while your unbelief was
loudest, was hiding a subtile faith. The storm
that has torn off the hatches and lit up the dark
hold suddenly with its vivid lightning, has torn
off also the covering from your spul and given
you a flash of information in regard to its con
tents which surprises yourself — not me.

REAL UNBELIEF! 33
But one need not wait for death to be at hand
in order to test the solidity of his unbelief. Let
him suppose himself about to die, and after hav
ing summoned around himself by a strong effort
of imagination the- solemn circumstances of the
last hour, and put himself as nearly as possible
amid the views and feelings that belong to such
a time, let him then look to see what his mind
contains. Is it disbelief, or even unbelief?
Would he not, as a matter of safety, rather die a
Christian than an unbeliever? I am persuaded
that in most cases the man would feel compelled
to say yes to such a question — showing that at
the bottom of his heart he really thinks religion
to have in its favor a balance of likelihood. The
chances are for it rather than against it. Here is
faith — faith at its smallest, if you please, but still
faith. Just as soon as one views the claims of
religion as on the whole more likely to be true
than not, he is entitled to cry out with the man
in the gospel, "Lord, I believe; help thou my
unbelief." He believes, though his mind is still
full of doubts and cobwebs. "The spider takes
hold with her hands, and is in the king's palace."
It is a matter of experience that it is quite
safe for the friends of religion to assume the
existence of a subtile intellectual faith in it,
hiding at the bottom of the hearts of most of our
Tempted to Unbelief. 5

34 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
professed unbelievers. We need not be at the
trouble of always arguing with them. We may
largely talk with them as if they are quite aware
that the probabilities are in favor of religion.
They are aware of it after a certain latent fashion.
We have only to sound them prudently in order
to see it; have only to help them to look into
their own minds, as if from a death-bed, to ena
ble them to see it for themselves. And when
they find that in such a case they would rather,
on the whole, risk themselves with Christianity
than with unbelief, they are to regard themselves
as having a real, though it may be a very feeble
faith. They should at once dismiss themselves
from the class of atheists or infidels into that of
believers. The name fairly belongs to them.
They should be disabused of the idea which so
many, if not most, have, that one cannot properly
be said to believe unless he knows — unless he has
conviction without any doubts. And calling
things by their right names, they should at once
proceed to do with their discpvery as a certain
man did with his.
He floated on a deep lake, and sought to see
what lay at the bottom. But the breeze was
strong, the waters ran wrinkles in every direc
tion, and lights and shadows chased each other
in a thousand confusing .ways. One day, how-

REAL UNBELIEFi 35
ever, when the western sun was slanting its rays
at him through the calm water, he saw the far
bottom as he had never seen it before; and from
among the pebbles a great jewel sent up to his
eye its splendid gleam. He lost no time in
bringing it to the surface. It became his capital.
The capital gradually enlarged itself in the course
of business, and now he is living like a prince by
means of the treasure that lay hid so long beneath-
the waves. The soul from out its window looks,
And with the greatest ease
An outward world of sky and earth
Blazing with sunlight sees.
But when it turns to look within,
From all that outward glare,
The room is dark, and Titan-forms
May lie in hiding there.
For years he never saw his face,
How could his eyes discern ?
Forth from their sockets could they go,
Then backward on him turn .
But once, as o'er a spring he bent,
A fountain still and clear,
He saw at length that stranger self
Beneath the glass appear.
Surprised he saw — he had not thought
Such features his before.
Alas ! what forms within may hide,
To fright us evermore!

36 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
IV.
LOOK BEFORE LEAPING.
The business of investigation is one in which
every person is almost constantly engaged. Who
passes an hour of waking time without trying to
answer to himself questions of various degrees of
consequence ?
In most cases the mental process is very infor
mal; no scientific names or rules are used in con
nection with it; it consists of a successioni of half-
unconscious steps which would at once take
fright at such dignified names as logic and prem
ises and argument. And yet the thing done is
real investigation, as truly so as anything that
bears the name of Locke or Newton. It is an
attempt, step after step, to find out the truth. It
is a process in which the mind busies itself in
trying to discover what are facts: it may be
concerning pleasure, or business, or politics, or
science, or religion.
For the successful prosecution of this univer
sal business many rules have been laid down.
Perhaps the most widely accepted of these rules
is that which requires an impartial mind in the

LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 37
inquirer. He must be thoroughly in equipoise.
He must be as willing to answer his question nega
tively as affirmatively; must not choose to find the
truth on the one side rather than on the other. If
this is not possible, if he has preferences and
cannot but have them, he must be careful not to
allow them any influence in collecting, estima
ting, and balancing rival evidences. His judg
ment must be divorced from his feelings. He
must be as nearly as possible an intellectual
machine. It is claimed that the due observance
of this rule will do more toward bringing the
mind to a just decision than anything else.
Still it is not a rule well kept. It is found in
practice a hard matter to keep our partialities
from influential intercourse with our investiga
ting reason. They largely break quarantine.
They largely give the cue to our intellectual
faculties — put leading questions, hold leading
strings, build tramways for the trains of thought
to run upon toward the favorite verdict. Set a
father to investigating charges against a favorite
son, a Roman hierarchist to inquiring into the
rights of his order, a polygamist to deciding on
the laws concerning marriage: how sure are the
feelings to take sides in force before a single
intellectual point is made, and then to stand
whispering at the ear ofthe understanding through

38 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
the whole course of the argument! The man
does not make formal objection to the rule requi
ring impartiality; he does not mean or wish to
come to an unfair conclusion: he means and
wishes to find a true verdidt, and to find it,' if
possible, on the side of his interests.
Undoubtedly this is, in general, a very un
philosophical and harmful way of conducting
investigation. Our feelings have no general
commission to blaze the trees for our journey
through the forest, to pilot our sailing through
beclouded seas. Yet there is at least one great
exception. We may properly conduct an inquiry
into the truth of Theism and Christianity under
the guidance of a strong wish to find them true.
Nay, we should do vast injustice to ourselves, to
society, and to the fundamental principles of
human nature, by approaching these doctrines in
any other way. They are so useful. They are
so necessary. Their removal from the world
would bring so much of peril and loss, that the
law of self-preservation demands them for the
individual, the family, and society at large. Un
belief is so impolitic and harmful a thing that no
person ought to be willing, or, with his eyes well
open on the fadts, can be willing to have it. We
could hardly do a more unreasonable and suicidal
thing than to be willing to have it proved to us

LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 39
that God is a mistake and the Scriptures a fable.
There is no danger of its being done; but granting
for the moment that it could be, it would be the
height of practical folly for any one to allow
himself to be convinced by the proofs, if any
amount of precaution and effort could prevent it.
So, prior to all formal inquiry, a man can, with
the greatest good sense, say to all attacking athe
ists and infidels, "I do not want to be, an unbe
liever, and I do not mean to be such if I can help
it. I shall do my very best to establish my mind
in the faith of my fathers, the current faith of the
civilized world. You may depend upon it that
I will not be without a God and a message from
him if any amount of pains can prevent. I shall
make it a point to find true, if I fairly can, what
is so necessary to myself and society."
I justify that man with my whole heart.
So did ancient Plutarch, who wrote, ' ' You would
sooner build a city in the air than cause a state to
subsist without religion." So did the French
Directory when it gave as the order of the day,
J " Terror and all the virtues'' So did Byron in his
notable confession of the disadvantages of unbe
lief for two worlds. And so, unless my own
experience is at fault, unbelievers of the more
thoughtful and moral class are very apt to do in
their frank moments. Ask almost any man of

40 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
sense and observation, putting him on his honor
and conscience to speak frankly, ask him whether
he does not think that a real, solid, practical
faith in God and the Bible would, on the whole,
be a better thing for his son and all connected
with him than unbelief would be— what would
be the answer ? He might not speak it, but ere a
moment had elapsed, he would think it. "Prac
tically," says he to himself, "it is better that my
son have a God and a religion. He sometimes
shows tendencies that alarm me; and whatever
may be the abstract truth in these matters, I
cannot conceal from myself that for him to pro
foundly believe is likely to be followed by better
results to himself and all within his sphere of
influence, not excluding even the brutes, than for
him not to believe. ' '
So feel most parents. Though unbelieving
themselves, they do not care to have their fami
lies so. It were a threat against their future.
They foresee not merely that, as living in a Chris
tian land, unbelief would be a great social disad
vantage to them, inviting distrust and alienation
from the best part of the community, and seri
ously interfering with worldly prospects, but that
it would remove salutary restraints from the char
acter, and promote waywardness, insubordination,
and all downward-looking tendencies. A breeder

LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 41
of mischief and trouble for a man in this world,
what could it do for him in another (if there be
another) save to harm him, perhaps fatally?
Yes ; as a matter of prudence and promise and
comfort, parents would prefer to have their chil
dren believe.
So feels a prudent young man when, stepping
out into the world to become a candidate for its
honors or gains, he is invited to cast off the faith
of his fathers and set himself in antagonism to
Christendom. What will he gain by the step?
Greater sense of freedom in taking wrong courses?
Well, is this 'really a gain? — a gain to have the
road cleared and the brakes taken off for a down
ward rush ? Will he really be able to possess him
self so fully with unbelief as to feel thoroughly
safe and comfortable in such a descent? What
will he lose? First and most, character; then
friends, repute, openings in life ; for what family
or situation of trust or emolument in a Christian
land will open to him the more readily from his
being known as an atheist or infidel? He is
likely to suffer in morals, in happiness, in stand
ing, in prospects for this world and the next (if
there' be a next) by becoming an unbeliever.
Surely it would be greatly against his interests.
Shall he drive them all, a reluctant herd, to a
slaughter-house ? No.
Tempted to Unbelief. 6

42 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
So feels the community — when it takes time
to think. It feels that general unbelief would
sacrifice it generally. With God and the Bible,
away goes the Sabbath, away the sanctuary, away
the ministry, away the Sabbath-school, and fam
ily religious instruction, and all the religious lit
erature ; away the sense of a Divine eye on the
life and the heart ; away the sense of responsibil
ity and a future state ; away the hope of heaven
and the fear of hell ; away, before long, even the
very recognition of moral distinctions — for the
same sort of reasoning that sets aside the Bible
and God is just as good against the foundation of
common morality. It is hard enough now, with
the instrudlions and hopes and fears and strenu
ous upward pressure of Christian institutions, to
resist the downward tendency of society ; how the
waters would rush and roar were the dams quite
taken away ! As Franklin said to Paine, ' ' If
mankind is so bad with religion, what would it
be without !' ' What a place ! Value flees express
from lands, houses, fisheries, factories, stores —
everything. Desirable families move out; none
but undesirable families move in. Each genera
tion of young people is worse than its predecessor.
Laws and magistrates have to strain to keep such
a community in order, and, after all, strain in vain.
For unbelief means no-religion, and no-religion

LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 43
means anarchy or despotism. The place becomes
a byword and a hissing ; a Nazareth without a
Holy Family, a Sodom from which to flee with
out looking behind. Oh for at least a Paganism
for the reprobate place that neither fears God nor
regards man — the reprobate place that knows too
much to have many gods, and too little to have
One! So much from the standpoint of sensible and
observing men. From that of the Christian, who
supplements the information derived from con
sciousness, observation, and ' ' Reigns of Terror ' '
by the testimony of the Scriptures, much more
must be said. We must say that unbelief sacrifices
enormously the interests of men for two worlds;
that it is by far the most comprehensive and fun
damental disaster that ever befalls men. This
will appear if we notice in some detail what great
things a positive and influential faith can do
for us; for the consideration of these will show us
what a great evil that unbelief is which makes
such great benefits impossible, as a black, univer
sal vacuum makes impossible a green world and
the spangled heavens. And this showing will
account to unbelievers for the urgency with which
some Christians seek to discourage unbelief. We
think we see in it the parent of infinite mischief.
And mere doubters are obliged to confess that our

44 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
thought may be just, and should govern them
selves accordingly.
We find ourselves assailed by three immense
armies — errors, sins, and sorrows. How shall this
triple enemy be overcome? This is the great
question of human life. Answers are not want
ing. Says one, ' ' I will tell you how to put down
errors; especially, how to be safe from the worst
of them, the more pernicious errors in religion.
Enlarge and culture your mind, store it with use
ful knowledge, bring reason to bear on the cloudy
question, ventilate it by free discussion, consult
authorities and geniuses: so you may hope to
conquer the assailing error." Says another,
' ' And I will tell you how you may conquer sins.
Acquaint yourself with the laws of nature, acquire
enlightened views of self-interest, become familiar
with the experience of the world as formulated in
histories and laws, consult your natural instincts
and conscience : so shall you find yourself able
to beat off both the sins which have fastened
upon you and those beginning to assail you with
their skirmishing van of temptations. ' ' Says an
other, ' ' Hear from me how you may conquer sor
rows. Go to divine philosophy and learn stoicism.
Go to bustling occupation and crowd out the sense
of trouble. Yes, go, if need be, to pleasure, to
dissipation, to inebriation even, and drown the

LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 45
sorrows which prudence could not succeed in
averting, nor philosophy succeed in bearing. So
conquer afflictions. ' '
There is yet another witness. Let the Bible
come upon the stand and testify in answer to the
question, ' ' How does a man overcome the world —
that is, the assailing evils of it?" An answer
comes promptly and strongly : ' ' This is the vic
tory that overcometh the world, even your Faith.
It is a practical Christian faith alone that can
really master the world's errors, sins, and troubles.
Here is the quiet force that is to save the harassed
and ravaged nations. By this paradise may come
back again — a paradise of truth, of goodness, and
of joy. With this you may find your way safely
through all the sophistries of heresies, through all
the enticements of wickedness, through all afflic
tions — though you reckon among them the death
of the dearest friend you have, and even your own
death. Let the world's triple army do its worst ;
shall I fear for the feeblest real Christian ? Nay,
his faith is the mighty man-at-arms who will
steadily push on from advantage to advantage till
the field is cleared of the foe, even of stragglers.
All grave errors shall fall, all sins shall fall, all
trials shall fall, yes, even death and hell shall
fall. " Such is the general witness-bearing of the
Scriptures as to what Faith can do for men.

46 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF^
But let us itemize this testimony somewhat.
I. Faith prevents or removes all serious errors in
religious belief — invariably does so.
A man comes to a practical faith in the Bible.
He so believes in it as to enthrone the principle
of obedience to it in his will. Now can this man,
by any manner of means, be brought to perma
nently accept any fundamental error of religious
doctrine ? Can you make an atheist or an infidel
of him ? Can you shut his eyes on the Deity and
atonement of Christ, or the necessity of regenera
tion by the Holy Spirit, or a future of endless
rewards and punishments? I care not how un
learned and scant in logical faculty he may be,
nor how many acute errorists expend their soph
istries upon him ; he is safe. He may not be able
to utter a word of argument, but he knows. There
is a holy polarity about him that feels out grave
errors and recognizes them as such under all dis
guises. The Spirit teaches him. "An unction
from the Holy One' ' enables him to know all things
fundamental. He opens his mouth widely, and
it is filled. He remembers and tests the promise:
' ' If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, and
it shall be given him." In this way he comes to
know all things pertaining to life and godliness-
comes to know them as soon as it is important
for him to know them. If there is any religious

LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 47
point that does not clear up to him, it is because
it is not important to him, or because he will be
protected from any evil that would naturally arise
from ignorance or mistake in regard to it — accord
ing to the promise that ' ' all things shall work to
gether for good to them that love God. ' ' What
with the prevention of mistake, or of the harm
that naturally comes from it, all the fiery darts of
heresy and misbelief that destroy so many will
play on him in vain. His shield of faith quenches
them. Talents might fail to do this, as they have
often done; education might fail, as it has often
failed; but a simple, practical faith in Christ is
sure to shelter him to the end. Have you never
seen some humble Christian beset with shrewd
and plausible cavils night and day from his fam
ily and business relations, and yet making no
more account of them than the rock does of the
pattering rain? Cease to wonder; he is being
"kept by the power of God, through faith, unto
salvation. ' '
Now conceive of a man who has already fallen
into grave religious errors, but nevertheless such
as are not inconsistent with a general intellectual
belief in the Scriptures. At last he is brought to
turn that barren faith into a practical one. He
sets himself to doing as he believes. What fol
lows ? Does he go on holding that God is merci-

48 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
fui without being just ; that man is not by nature
as well as practice a miserable sinner ; that no
atonement has been made, or that none is needed;
that a good, moral life is all that is wanted to
carry a man freely through the gates of heaven —
does he still harbor a single one of these old er
rors ? Snap go the flukes of their anchor. See,
they are drifting helplessly out to sea, and will
soon be out of sight. No parting salute even
from the harbor-master. He is glad to see them
departing. He is against them without argu
ment. They part company with him from mere
uncongeniality with the new man in Christ Jesus.
The old reasonings and objections which once
held them and him together suddenly become
ropes of sand. You hear no more of them from
the time when, with a broken heart, he carries his
sins to Jesus and devotes himself to a Christian
life. Spring has come, and the winter garments
are shed as a matter of course. Tell it in all the
country round — the evil spirits have gone out of
the man; they are cast out, never to return. And
a simple, working faith in the Bible is the mighty
exorcist, doing with wonderful ease what no elo
quent arguments and natural light of reason or
education had ever succeeded in doing. Invaria
bly this is so. No man practically believes with
out at once serving a writ of ejectment on all his

LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 49
grave heterodoxies. Doing the will of God, he
knows the doctrine. And the Scriptures guaran
tee that this victory over error that begins so aus
piciously shall advance till it becomes perfect — if
not in this world, surely in the next.
II. Faith breaks the dominion of every sin at once,
and finally destroys it — invariably does so.
Particular sins are sometimes broken off by
means of other principles. Regard to his family
or to his health may recover a man from drunk
enness. A wish for comforts and honors may
cure a man of his indolence. Respectable society
may lead a man to quit his profanity. And the
victory in each case may be thorough and perma
nent. But there is only one thing that breaks
the sceptre of every sin at a single blow — indeed,
that breaks the sceptre of any sin as such. It is
an influential religious faith. The moment this
enters the soul it overthrows at one stroke the au
thority of all sins whatsoever ; is sure to do it,
and to go on doing till the foe is extinct. It may
be some time before that easily -besetting sin
ceases to be committed. It may return at inter
vals for years, and be very troublesome. But it is
a dethroned monarch. It is no longer an allowed
habit. The man ' ' cannot sin (habitually) because
he is born of God. ' ' His new-born love to Christ
and holiness, the indwelling Spirit, his living
Tempted tc Unbelief. 7

So TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
faith in the promises and threats of Scripture, all
forbid. Nor does his faith stop at this introduc
tory conquest. After having broken up the em
pire of sin in all its varieties, it proceeds by de
grees to take away its very life. It starves and
bleeds it daily. By little and little, or by great
and great, it beats the prostrate and panting foe
to death. At last victory becomes extermination.
See, the enemy is small as the dust of the summer
threshing-floor. And the man with a heart wholly
' ' purified by faith ' ' leaves the conquered world
to "receive an inheritance among them that are
sandtified by faith that is in Me." Mere con
science and natural religion never do this ; an
enlightened sense of self-interest never does it ;
nor does example, human authority, pride of char
acter, or anything of the sort. A mightier con
queror is needed. ' ' This is the victory that over
cometh the world, even jour faith"
III. Faith sweetens the bitterness of all trials in
this world, takes away all their power to injure, and
even turns them into positive benefits ; and in the
world to come substitutes for eternal misery eternal
happiness — invariably does so.
Plainly, the weight of every trial is lessened
to one who has learned to trust the providence of
God. And some do not need to be told that there
is an amount of lifting power in this trust which

LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 51
belongs to no other principle known to them.
They have tested the matter, and know that an
affectionate conviction that God reigns helps one to
bear up under trouble as neither business nor com
pany nor the consolations of philosophers can do.
We admit that these can do something for us ; but
their help is very insufficient and unreliable. And
then they can never totally take away the power
to harm from a single trial. They can never make
a single trouble fight for one instead of against
him. Who has ever heard of a worldly nostrum
that dared pretend itself able to "make all things
work together for good ' ' to him who would give
it a fair trial? But a practical Christian faith
does dare to claim as much as this — claims to do
it, not now and then, but in the case of every man
in whom it exists, and in the case of every adver
sity, however grim and even destructive in its
natural temper. From the moment you become
a true Christian, all bitters become sweets to you,
all poisons become food, all enemies become
friends. Nothing shall by any means hurt you ;
everything shall by all means bless you. The
whole dreary kingdom of adversity, wet with
tears and vocal with groans, and from which men
shrink away as they ought to shrink from sin —
this whole great realm shall not contain a single
sorrow which, constrained by your living faith,

52 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
shall not cry out to you, "The blessing of the
Lord be upon you; we bless you in the name of
the Lord. " Is it the last sickness of your dearest
friend? He is smitten, he pines, he fades, he is
gone. So angry-looking is the trial, and so fierce
ly he wields his glittering blade, you fear that he
is about to kill you. And he might, but for your
faith. As it is, he is a mastered enemy — nay, a
thorough-going friend. "God bless thee," he
says ; and verily thou shalt be blessed. Despite
all his rough and angry ways, he will, for faith's
dear sake, work in you "the peaceable fruit of
righteousness," and work for you an "exceeding
and eternal weight of glory. ' '
It is one thing to bear up well under trials;
it is another and more glorious thing to rejoice in
them. This latter is the privilege of the more
devout Christian believer. His strong faith gives
him songs in the night — songs even on account of
the night. Say it is the night of death that is
shutting down around him. He watches the
shadows deepen and knows that the end is nigh.
Is he afraid? Is he merely calm? Look, faith
takes full inspiration, draws herself up to her
full queenly stature, looks upward. Star after
star comes out on the jetty concave, cluster after
cluster, galaxy after galaxy, till the arch is ablaze
with heavenly hopes and promises.

LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 53
" O glorious hour ! O blest abode !
I shall be near and like my God."
"To depart and be with Christ; which is far
better." "To die is gain." "O death, where
is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"
So "death is swallowed up in victory;" and the
dying man, with strong heart and feeble voice
and radiant face, sings praises, and blesses God
for the privilege of dying.
See what faith can do for one ! Uncommon
stupidity may enable him to die like a brute;
uncommon faith can enable him to die- — shall I
say like a hero ? Nay, in the spirit of a transla
tion. The world, in the form of its last and
keenest sorrow, is dragged at his chariot wheels
as they go up: and the victory that overcometh
is his faith. What but faith can overcome in
this manner ? In thousands on thousands of cases
it has won such triumphs; where is the other
principle among us that has done it in one ?
A man begins to conquer error, sin, and sor
row when he begins to exercise a true Christian
faith. As years pass, this vidtory widens and
brightens; for the path of the just is as the shi
ning light, that shines more and more unto the
perfect day. The victory becomes complete at
the death-bed, which is the greatest and most
conclusive battle-field of the whole war. There

54 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
views brighten, piety ripens, and comforts swell,
whatever may be the outward appearance, with
a rapidity before unknown. As the last breath
is being drawn, the work of years is done; and
faith, just on the point of being transfigured into
sight, summons to herself tenfold energy, and
drags out under the light of the opening heaven
all remaining errors, sins, and sorrows, and
despatches them at a blow. In a moment the
transition is from one who knows in part to one
who knows even as he is known, from a very
sinful man to a spirit of the just made perfect,
from terrestrial pain to celestial bliss. By one
great step, as if from continent to continent, the
vidtory of faith over all the world's evils is
complete. See what, according to the Scriptures, a
Christian faith can do for men. It can conquer the
world. But in different Christians faith appears
in different statures. In one it is a giant, and in
another a dwarf. And so the victory of one
shines on the eye of acquaintances like an Aus-
terlitz, while that of another is but a Trenton.
Examples of the last sort are of course more
numerous; but the more illustrious ones are ever
coming to our knowledge. Biographies, obitua
ries, and our own eyes show them by hundreds
and hundreds. Behold men and women, and

LOOK BEFORE LEAPING

55

even little children, of whom the world is not
worthy — some whose names are historical, and
many whose names after a little will shine only
in God's Book of Remembrance — marching along
their highways of spiritual victory; and now let
us open widely our eyes and gaze on the Glory
as it advances from dawn to sunrise and onward
to the high noon of death and heaven. What
have we to say ? Does not our whole soul declare
that there is no victory won on earthly plains
which can for a moment be compared with this —
none so great, none so beautiful, none so desirable
for ourselves, among all chronicled by historians,
or sung by poets, or coveted by the beplumed and
bestarred sons of pride and ambition ? And this
superlative victory of some is, according to the
Bible, within reach of all.
But unbelief is the negation of this grand and
¦ comprehensive victory. It suppresses it in ad
vance. It reaches forward with its long spear
and slays it while yet in the womb of the possi
ble. Of course a Christian cannot but look upon
unbelief as inexpedient. Nay, he holds it the
deadly foe of mankind. He holds it a slayer of
souls and of immortalities. He holds it worse
than the worst poison that ever laid men in
graves. With these views he cannot but be dis
mayed to see it getting entertainment in so many

56 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
quarters under specious names of Free Thought
and even science; cannot but seize every oppor
tunity of smiting it with the sword of his mouth
and of his pen.
And it would do no harm if unbelievers would
ask themselves whether they can prove that these
Scriptural views of the inexpediency of unbelief
are not correct.

GIVE ME— GEOMETRY. 57

V.

GIVE ME-GEOMETRY.
Credulity is a common fault. Almost every
one is apt to receive on insufficient evidence
what he wishes to have true. How readily
stories to the prejudice of an enemy are be
lieved !
And it cannot be denied that, within the sphere
of religion, multitudes are quite too easy of faith.
The heathen who worships his block of wood,
the Moslem who reveres a dissolute and bloody
robber as first of prophets, the Mormon who sees
inspiration through the black opacity of Joseph
Smith — on what a mere nothing do hundreds of
millions of such men rest their strong faith! Nay,
we are sometimes amazed to ,see how easily per
sons who have had the best .advantages of Chris
tian lands can be led to embrace some gross error.
Mere flecks and shadows of plausibility, not to
say empty guesses that ring hollow under our
knuckles, are found sufficient to entice their con
fidence away from ancient doctrines which are
grounded like the everlasting hills. They are not
unaptly represented by the fabled dog that stood
Tempted to Unbelief. 8

58 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
with closed eyes and open mouth, ready to swal
low anything which the passer-by had a mind to
sweeten a little and cast in.
Yes, it is plain that many believe with too great
ease. But is it not also plain that many believe
with too great difficulty ? Just let a doctrine (po
litical, scientific, or religious) to which we are
disinclined be put upon its proof before us, and
we at once become very nice and exacting critics;
and if our convictions are at last carried, it is
only after a display of perhaps double the evi
dence we would have required and thought ample
in support of a pleasing doctrine. Just let a duty
that we dislike call for recognition, and we at
once become exceedingly hard to be convinced of
its claims, and perhaps ask several times as much
evidence for it as we would have asked had the
duty been of an agreeable sort. We turn every
way to find objections and excuses. Arguments
on the one side are made the least of ; arguments
on the other side are made the most of. Mere
presumptions are magnified into demonstrations
on the one hand ; and on the other quasi-demon-
strations are dwarfed into presumptions. If un
belief cannot be sustained on general grounds- we
look about, unconsciously perhaps, for something
special to ourselves and our circumstances to fall
back upon. ' ' This may be the duty of others, ' ' I

GIVE ME— GEOMETRY. 59
say, ' ' but my case is peculiar. Doubtless they are
bound to be contented, forgiving, liberal, well-in-
formed,*public-spirited. If I were situated as they
are I would not hesitate. But I have so many
needs, disabilities, provocations, cares, which
they have not, that what is binding on them is
not binding on me." So we argue. We really
refuse to believe in our duty except on proofs
absolutely overwhelming. The largest ship of
war, if not the entire war-navy of the world,
must bear down upon us before we will surrender.
This is totally unjustifiable. It is against all our
instincts of fair dealing; against all respectable
logic and moral science. Just as soon as there
appears more probability for than against, faith
is under bonds both to reason and conscience to
appear in such degree as to decide the conduct.
I knew a good man who doubted the reality
of his own piety. He sought for evidence of it.
Now be reasonable, man, and content yourself with
something less than a Waterloo. But no; feeling
that piety was all-important, that its absence
meant destruction and its presence heaven, he
felt that he could not be too sure that he possessed
it. So mere probabilities were of no account to
him — mere blades of grass, where ancient oaks
were wanted. Unless he could have an oak staff
"tall as the mast of some great admiral," he

60 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
would not take a single step toward comfort. No
matter that he was consciously trying, to shape
both life and heart by the Bible and conscience,
that he was a man of devoutness and prayer,
that he loved good things and hated their oppo-
sites, it all went for nothing.
"Oh, for something to make doubt impossible!
There are so many deceptions. Oh, for some wrest
ling geometry to conquer all my doubts as if so
many triangles! The heart is such a dark abyss.
Oh, for some blazing sun to shoot athwart the gloom !
Satan is sometimes such an angel of light. Oh,
that I might even look into the Book of Life and
find my name or that some angel would come
and tell me that he has seen it there !"
This was his way of thinking and feeling.
Did I blame him for wishing to be as sure as
possible in a matter of so much consequence?
By no means. Only for saying, in effect, that he
would have complete demonstration or nothing;
not for wanting assurance of hope, but for not
allowing rational probability to give him such
assurance. This was trampling under foot the
first principles of reasoning. In his case it proved
to' be almost suicide. The hypercritical, exces
sively exacting, man became unhealthy in his
whole tone of mind to the verge of insanity. He
was insane in his treatment of evidence.

GIVE ME— GEOMETRY. 61
I knew a man who refused to believe anything
good of his fellow-men till he was compelled to
do so. He believed ill of them readily enough.
Any unsavory report his faith went out to meet
as a vulture speeds to carrion. But a good report
had to go in search of him; and when he was
found it was in a castle, with drawbridge up and
portcullis down, and "get in if you can" in
scribed on every bristling tower and battlement.
Suspicion was king. Objections were the order
of the day. Men must be assumed guilty till
they are proved innocent. And proof of inno
cence must be iron clad — something that will
stand unlimited pounding, and will carry every.
thing before it. To be sure he would have been
sorry to be himself judged in the same manner.
He would have thought himself hardly dealt by.
He would have been; society cannot endure such
behavior. The man who perpetrates it is con
sidered a porcupine and a nuisance. So I expos
tulated with him.
"What ! no good opinion of your neighbor till
it is pressed out of you by a superincumbent moun
tain of evidence ! Do you not see that the prin
ciple on which you proceed is both untolerated
and intolerable? If you meet a man whose charac
ter is so resplendent and self-proving as to take
captive your faith at sight, in the manner of a re-

62 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
sistless giant, it certainly is matter for rejoicing;
but reason and the necessities of life, as well as
charity, require that you yield confidence to men
in general on something less than the sun shining
in his strength. Faith must go with the balance
of probability. You are bound to accept such
evidence in favor of your fellows as the important
affairs of life are wont to be conducted on ; such
evidence as that on which men daily risk health,
repute, fortune, life, and empires."
Here is a servant whose name is Thomas.
Let us suppose that he has lived with his Master
some years ; that during that time he has in many
ways proved the excellent character of that Mas
ter, and especially the sureness of His word; that
he has heard Him say distinctly that He should
die, and rise again the third day after; that he
has known Him do many wonderful things, quite
as wonderful as His own rising from the dead
would be ; also that he has had a long and famil-
/ iar acquaintance with ten fellow-servants of his,
enough to assure him of their general capacity
and trustworthiness as witnesses ; that the Master
has died according to prediction, and that he has
just been told by the ten, as well as by others,
that the dead is alive, and has been seen and con
versed with by themselves. Does he believe this
very capital evidence ? Nothing of the sort. On

GIVE ME— GEOMETRY. 63
the contrary, he flatly refuses to grant faith to
anything short of two sorts of demonstration, ocu
lar and tangible, and says, "Unless I can see
Jesus for myself, and put my finger in the print
of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I
will not believe." Perhaps he prides himself on
his caution, thinks himself a philosopher, looks
down on his fellow-servants as so many weaker
specimens of human nature. If he does, we no
more share his views than his Master is said to
have done. "Blessed are they who have not
seen, and yet have believed." Society could not
stand the strain of such a principle as Thomas'
skepticism proceeds on. It is a piece of logical
extravagance and absurdity. Before the testi
mony of those ten fellow-servants had died away
on the ear he should have cast his unbelief to the
winds. I knew an agnostic. He had not faith in the
Bible, or even in God. Why? Well, he in effect
demanded that evidence in favor of these, if it
exists, should present itself unsought ; and so he
had never sought for it. Or that the evidence
should open its full force to him at a single glance
as he ran by on his business or pleasure ; and so a
running glance was all he had given. Or that
the evidence should not require such attention
and candor and thoroughness as are exacted in

64 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
settling all other important questions ; and so it
happened that he really gave far less carefulness
and thoroughness of thought to the subject of God
and his revelation than to almost any other mat
ter of confessed consequence. Or that the evi
dence should come in upon him like some storm-
pushed mountain wave upon a reef— that is, over
whelmingly, burying all objections and cavils
fathoms deep beneath its triumphant flood ; and,
such overwhelming demonstrations had not yet
come to him. He would have liked very much
to have them. He would have liked a miracle or
two : say, to have the being of God blazoned on
the arch of the sky — as indeed it is, only the sym
bols are not English letters — so as to make unbe
lief impossible ; or to have a dead acquaintance
come back in the robes of the resurrection, with
the glory of an angelic escort, to certify in plain
est Saxon to Jesus of Nazareth. Failing this, he
would have chosen some sacred calculus, or at
least some moral science before which the hardi
est objector becomes dumb, after whose mighty
words men speak not again ; a logic so convin
cing as to stop all mouths, like the Christian
Judgment-day. Well, I do not blame him for
liking such magnificent proofs. I would not ob
ject to them myself. But he went so much beyond
this as to say that he would not believe without

GIVE ME— GEOMETRY. 65
such proofs. ' ' Unless, ' ' he said, ' ' I may put my
finger in the print of the nails, and thrust my
hand into his side, I will not believe. ' '
Was this unreasonable? I repeat that it is
quite natural and reasonable for a man to desire
absolute certainty in matters of such consequence.
The Scriptures encourage this desire, and profess
to point out a way in which the desire may be
gratified. But this way does not forsake the laws
of evidence, but rather uses them as a stair by
which to mount gradually to the heights of cer
tainty. Instead of beginning faith in demonstra
tion, it begins it in the greater probability, and
then shows us how to go from strength to strength.
But this unbeliever demanded to begin faith where
logically it ends ; and declared that he would
have no faith at all unless he could have it at the
outset in the form of an empire on which the sun
never sets. As we have seen in other cases, this
is flagrant unreason, nay, anti-reason. If, on in
quiry, it appeared to him that there is a balance of
probability, however slight, in favor of God and
the Scriptures, that unbeliever was as truly bound
to yield his assent to it, and to act accordingly, as
if that balance had been a mountain instead of a
mole-hill, a sun instead of a firefly. This is the
universally admitted canon of logic. Its use in
all wise conduct of affairs is universal. Refusal
Tempted to Unbelief. Q

66 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
to use it would disorganize society and ruin most
of our sciences. Out of the domain of the pure
mathematics, all our scientific fadts and principles
rest their entire weight on a balance of probabil
ity. Does not the sort of proof that underlies all
weightiest matters of private or public concern,
from the fate of empires downward, and which is
the foundation of science itself, and which con
fessedly binds the reason and conscience in all —
does not this sort of proof also bind reason and
conscience in the great religious questions ?
The degree of guilt involved in a refusal of
faith to sufficient evidence, depends partly on the
degree of evidence refused, and partly on the
motive that prompts the refusal. We are told
that all his fellow-disciples, and other most relia
ble persons, assured Thomas of the resurrection;
also that the miracles and predictions of Jesus
had given the best of reasons for expecting that
event. From these premises we cannot but say
that the unbeliever had far more than sufficient
warrant for believing. This makes heavily
against him. But, on the other hand, it must
be considered that a leading reason why Thomas
declined to believe may have been his very trem
bling eagerness to have the resurrection true.
He may have felt that it was almost too good a
thing to happen, too gigantic and sublime a

GIVE ME— GEOMETRY. 67
piece of good fortune for such a sinner to fall in
with. He feared disappointment, and perhaps
thought he could hardly endure the shock, if,
after counting on a living Christ, he should find
only a dead one. This may have led to his
extreme caution; and the conjecture finds sup
port in what is told us elsewhere of the very
strong attachment of Thomas to his Master — an
attachment once expressed in the exclamation,
"Let us also go that we may die with him."
So we are disposed to soften our first severe judg
ment of Thomas, and to tone it down to the
gentle rebuke which his Master is said to have
administered : ' ' Blessed are they who have not
seen, and yet have believed. ' '
But our Christian principles do not allow us
to take so mild a view of that agnostic infidel
and atheist. They teach us that there is no fadt
of science that stands out more plainly on the
face of Nature than does the fadt of a God. They
teach us that there is no part »f profane history,
much . as men rely on it, which is underlain by.
so great and solid a body of proof as are the chief
facts of Christianity. The weapons of distrust
and objection which would hold against them
would triumph against every event of conse
quence which has not fallen under our own eyes.
If Jesus did not live and teach and suffer as the

68 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
Bible says, neither did Julius Caesar live and-
fight and conquer as the "Commentaries" say.
Infidelity, to be consistent, must shake hands
with universal skepticism; must at least consent
to walk on all historic ground as on a quagmire
where one's footing cannot be counted on for a
moment. And now, if we proceed to ask for the
motive which, unknown perhaps to him, led that
agnostic to say that he would not believe unless
whole continents and oceans of demonstration
were flung at him, we get a clear answer from
the Bible itself: The light was not loved. He
did not come to it lest his deeds should be re
proved. The sinful heart with unerring instinct
scented the battle afar off, and garrisoned the
intellect against the benevolent hostility which
came to lay siege to it in the name of religion.
This is the philosophy of all unbelief as given
in the Bible. Of couse no believer in the Bible
can allow himself to think innocent, or less than
greatly guilty, the* man who insists on standing
out against all evidence for religion that falls
short of a silencing geometry.
And yet there were some extenuating circum
stances in the case of that particular unbeliever.
He was naturally of a very skeptical turn of
mind. Depravities of this sort do sometimes run
in the blood ; and the man's ancestors for two or

GIVE ME^-GEOMETRY. 69
three generations had been unbelievers in reli
gion. And then he was unfortunately brought
up, though the ward of a nominally Christian
man. His companions were not carefully looked
after. His books were not wisely sifted. Certain
corners of the extensive home library needed to be
washed with soap and nitre, and did not get what
they needed. He was never well warned against
the specious insinuations and sophistries by which,
in newspapers and magazines and lectures, ene
mies of religion so largely seek to discredit it, and
by which new barks are slyly cut loose from their
anchorage on God and his Word. At last that
negligent guardian awoke to a sense of his negli
gence — awoke too late. It was when the unkept
young man openly flung away from himself the
faith of Christendom, when he was no longer held
back by the restraints of revealed law and sanc
tions, when he appeared among the blasphemers
and profligates of the community, and was plainly
going down quick into the pit : it was then that
the wretched guardian lamented that, by a timely
effort of care and authority, he did not wall up his
house against the miseries and calamities of un
belief. And when he stood by, staff in hand and
with bowed and silvered head, and heard the now
mature and petrified skeptic demand of me, as a
condition of believing in Scripture and God and

70 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
moral distinctions, some earth-quaking proof that
could swallow up the whole populous Lisbon of
his objections in a moment, he blamed himself for
the unreasonableness of the demand almost as
much as he did the extravagant unbeliever. And
he blamed both heavily. How could he do oth
erwise, and yet echo the Book that says, "The
fool hath said in his heart, there is no God," and
"If any man will do His will, he shall know of
the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I
speak of myself ' ?
Unbelievers must be reasonable. They must
consent to take good, sound, moral proof in reli
gion, such as the conclusions of every-day life rest
on, or they will go down to their graves — not far
ther — unbelievers. Neither their senses nor their
mathematics will find opportunity to sit in judg
ment on either Christianity or Theism. In these
days no man begins faith by ' ' putting his finger ,
into the print of the nails;" or by taking the
ground, "Except I see signs and wonders I will
not believe." Instead of wishing for impossible
proofs, let him modestly and faithfully scrutinize
the actual. As much breath spent in tentative
prayer for light to a possible God as he has spent
in asking for such witnesses as resplendent angels,
or "Tekels" written with a ghostly hand on the
four walls of every doubt and objection, would ere

GIVE ME— GEOMETRY. 71
this have set his feet in a sure place. The time
he has spent in objecting, if spent in obeying what
he knows to be good and true in religion, would
have scattered his doubts to the winds. Instead
of telling, like Thomas, what kind of proof which
he has not would change his hesitation into con
viction, let him give himself to making the most
of the proof that he has. Let him weigh it as
honest traders weigh out their commodities. He
will find it more than enough to meet the de
mands of a reasonable logic. At any rate, it is
all he will ever get. He must rise to an over
coming faith on the pinions of just that common
place evidence by which he manages his business,
even in matters of life and death, or he will never
reach it at all. And it would be hard to show that
a plan of believing on probable evidence, with the
necessity of using candor and caution and even
prayer in collecting and weighing this evidence,
and of acting according to faith as fast as it is ob
tained, accompanied by a warrant of ever-increas
ing light and conviction on this path, would not
be a better discipline for man in general than any
other.

72 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
VI.
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.
His name was Trismegistus. Some thought
him a magician. He certainly did many won
derful things ; but they were only so many won
derful tricks. He was a juggler. By long prac
tice he had gained a certain sleight of hand which
enabled him, under certain favorable conditions,
to impose on the senses of spectators, and to seem
to do feats which he did not do. He did not really
eat the fire which he seemed to eat, nor draw out
of his mouth the endless ribbon which he seemed
to draw. This was a juggler with hands. Others are
jugglers after quite as surprising a fashion with
words. We have heard of a man who had such a
sleight of tongue that he was said to "use words
like a magician. ' ' He would talk by the hour,
as flows a river; and while he was talking, his
hearers heard what sounded amazingly like sense
and even wisdom ; but when they were by them
selves they could not, for the life of them, make
out anything from what had been said. They
felt as if they had been witnessing the perform-

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 73
ances of a juggler — a wonderful one, certainly,
but still such a dealer with words and ideas as
Trismegistus was with his hands.
Fundamental religious truth has sometimes
had to encounter men of this sort. Such were
the ancient Greek sophists. They were famous
for their skill at putting words and ideas together
so as to seem, for the time being, to prove what
ever they chose. Acute, subtle, masters of speech,
prepared to prove or disprove anything that might
be desired, delighting in paradoxes, they con
founded common people with their linguistic and
logical tricks, and even seemed to make out by
their syllogisms that there is nothing right in the
nature of things, but that whatever seems con
venient to a man, that is right to him. Socrates
arose and exposed them.
The Schoolmen of the Middle Ages were very
like these. No foundation in Scripture being
found for certain Romish doctrines, it became
desirable to find a foundation elsewhere. Accord
ingly, the Schoolmen set themselves to supply
what was needed. They would do it by reason
and — Aristotle. And so at last they came to han
dle words and logical forms with vast dexterity ;
no juggler was ever more astonishing with his
tricks of hand than they were with their tricks of
speech : while men listened or read, they seemed
Tempted to Unbelief. IO

74 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
to see the most absurd dogmas resting on the
broad and immutable foundations of science.
Simple folk were easily confounded. But some
times these expert dialecticians took different
sides of the same question. Sometimes the same
man would take different sides at different times.
Then the simplest had a chance to see that they
were dealing with jugglers. Could a thing and
its contradiction both be true ?
Lawyers, doubtless, are a very useful class of
men. I am willing to admit that, in the present
wicked state of the world, they are a necessity.
But I once heard one of them say that he thought
it "about as easy to prove the false as the true."
It is certain that not a few advocates act as if they
thought as this man said. They are quite as
ready to take up on the wrong side of a case as on
the right. And when they take up on the wrong,
if they are ingenious and practised pleaders, they
will use words and ideas so adroitly that a com
mon man will feel that they have the right of it —
until their opponent or the judge exposes the dex
terous sophistry. There is not a cause before the
courts of Christendom so false and absurd that an
expert advocate cannot give to it a seeming of
truth with superficial hearers ; none so just and
reasonable that he cannot object to it so plausibly
as to perplex perhaps nine-tenths of average men.

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 75
He is a nineteenth-century sophist, schoolman,
juggler; only his jugglery is one of words and
ideas, instead of hands. He deals in tricks as
much as Monsieur Houdin — only they are tricks
of speech and logic.
Are you sure of history ? I once thought my
self tolerably so ; and perhaps I am not yet quite
ready to give up all the records of the past. Yet
a school of destructive historical critics has ap
peared which has argued with so much ingenuity
against the early Greek, Roman, and Hebrew his
tory as to unsettle the faith of considerable num
bers in all history. Why will not the same sort
of reasoning that seems to make it doubtful
whether there was ever a Romulus, or a Troy, or
a Homer, or a Moses, serve equally well against
the credibility of all our histories ? Common peo
ple were dreadfully perplexed by those dexterous
skeptics. No doubt they perplexed themselves.
And yet the Roman excavations have a story to
tell. Schliemann has really found Troy by dig
ging; and Gladstone has really found Homer
without digging. And if one is not quite ripe for
bidding farewell to all human records quite up to
the present time, he will be quite likely to find
Moses and Jesus by reading Whately's "Historic
doubts concerning the existence of Napoleon Bo
naparte."

7 6 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
But now I hear a voice of the most positive
sort: "Thank heaven, there is one thing beyond
dispute. Nobody can make out a plausible case
against science ¦."
Pray, my friend, in what remote corner of the
world have you been sleeping the sleep of Van
Winkle, if not the sleep of the just ? Philosophi
cal transactions are a battle-field. Scarcely a sci
entific principle but has had to fight its way to
recognition through a storm of subtle cavils such
as sophists and schoolmen and pettifogging law
yers have used time out of mind. Every now and
then a man starts up in opposition to the Newto
nian Astronomy, and argues so cunningly as might
well befog one not well grounded in science. Just
now we have a man pushing a book against the
accepted theory of the tides ; and it must be con
fessed that, to the average unscientific reader, his
"demonstrations" would be likely to make a
very respectable appearance. The pure mathe
matics themselves have metaphysics at the bot
tom of them, which enables an adroit mind to
bring their very axioms into contention ; and one
who knows the mathematical history is hardly
surprised to find an able man saying that he "is
not prepared to say but that there is somewhere a
world where two and two do not make four."
Even the validity of our senses, and the very ex-

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 77
istence of that external nature to which most of
our sciences relate, have been so craftily talked
against that the best scholars have been put on
their mettle to expose the showy sophistries.
Is it, then, so very surprising that a verbal and
intellectual jugglery can be used with more or less
speciousness against the fundamental doctrines of
religion, however well proven they may be ? If
everything else that men believe in, and live by,
and are said to know, can be so cavilled against
as to disturb and mislead careless and superficial
thinkers — not excepting even the demonstrable
geometry itself and the simplest principles of com
mon morals — why not the Bible and Jesus and
God ? Of course they can. • One can make a
smoke about, anything, even about the finest and
whitest statue that ever came from the hand of
sculptor, or the noblest man that ever came from
the hand of God, or the whitest and noblest truth
that ever pointed at earth or heaven. How easily
one can alter beyond recognition the face of a per
son by a little paint judiciously distributed ! All
he has to do is to bring out into relief one or two
features and throw another two into the back
ground, and the disguise is complete. His near
est friend passes him in the street without know
ing him, especially in the twilight, or when riding
rapidly by with a preoccupied mind. Just so, by

78 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
a daub of word-color, or a patch or two of error,
one may so change truth that it shall seem false
hood, and falsehood so that it shall seem truth, to
one using his eyes carelessly. Some persons have
gotten such a skill at making these transforma
tions that they may well be compared to expert
and astonishing jugglers. They impose on others
with their tricks of tongue or pen as Signor Ca-
gliostro did with his tricks of hand. They even
sometimes impose on themselves. Words are like
glasses. Some glasses wonderfully color and dis
tort objects seen through them. Others obscure
and even wholly conceal, as do various colored
and smoked panes which strip the sun of its
beams and the landscape of its loveliness. And
some, like well-made telescopes and microscopes,
serve wonderfully to reveal both the earth and
heavens. And the reason itself is like the eye.
In a sound state the eye will show things as they
are. But it is a delicate instrument, liable to be
deranged by misuse ; and when deranged either
does not see at all, or misrepresents objects, or
creates optical illusions to which absolutely noth
ing answers in nature. So the reason, which
when sound and soundly used gives sound con
clusions, may easily be disordered by misuse, and
then can no more be relied on to give true results
than a watch whose wheels have been twisted and

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.

79

strained by abusive fingers can be relied on to give
the true time. This was the sort of treatment the
old sophists and schoolmen gave their reasoning
faculties ; and it is just what careless and unscru
pulous men still give to theirs. They wrest them.
They try to make them see what does not exist.
They drag them this way and that to serve a pur
pose. Instead of trying to prove what is true,
they try to prove what they wish. They argue,
perhaps, for the sake of arguing, to show their
ingenuity, to gain victories, to further what seems
their present interest. Such treatment demoral
izes reason. It becomes wholly unreliable. And
when such sleight of mind is employed in reli
gious matters, it gives us sometimes such men as
certain prominent skeptical writers. What are
they but eminent jugglers, seeming to do what
they do not, deftly putting together words and
ideas so as to impose on careless or uninstructed
people and make them think there is neither Rev
elation nor God ?
Yes, doubtless, the Bible and God can be very
plausibly and showily argued against. All that
we need are ingenious men, and unscrupulous
men, and men whose feelings are strongly enlist
ed againts religion. And such were Voltaire and
Paine and Heine and Strauss, and not a few other
unbelieving writers and lecturers. Acute, witty,

80' TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
brilliant, masters in the art of putting things — we
readily grant them to have been all that. Like
the Crusaders, we have to "confess that there have
been good men-at-arms even among the infidels.
They handled their weapons skilfully. And, for
the most part, they were as unprincipled as they
were skilful. They were bad men ; and their
theories were made to order, and made to match.
They were not troubled with scruples in any di
rection ; to a large extent they did not pretend to
any, either in writing or speaking or living. In
living they were profligates. This is a fair ac
count of most of those free-thinkers whose wri
tings form the arsenal of unbelief. Naturally,
such men dislike exceedingly the idea of being
under the government of a holy God, and in the
presence of a message from him so exacting and,
to them, so threatening as the Christian Scrip
tures. The worse men are, and the more they
have prostituted brilliant parts, the more they
shrink from the Judgment-day wrapped up in the
doctrine of God and his Bible ; and these men
shrank from it as the poles do from the equator.
They hated Christianity. " Crush the wretch !"
was their motto. Their pens dripped gall. They
were just the men to stop at nothing in the art of
misrepresentation ; just the men to count it a fine
art, and tax its resources to the utmost. Their

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 81
principles, or rather their want of principles,
gave them the freedom of the whole horizon of
venturesomeness and stratagem and falsehood.
Whatever they could do against religion they
felt at liberty to do. In fine, they were just the
men from whom one would expect feats of the
most varied and brilliant jugglery, rhetorical and
logical, in their assaults on religion.
And we actually find what might have been
expected. For .we find these assailants objecting
and arguing in a way which, however plausible
at first glance, a little reflection shows would be
equally good against most of our sciences, and
even the foundations of common morals. Bishop
Butler has shown that the leading objections
against Christianity are quite as good against a
God in nature ; and it would not take so great a
man as Butler to show that the chief objections to
a God, as well as the whole style of atheistic ar
guing, would serve equally well to discredit such
things as spirit, a future state, the essential differ
ence between right and wrong, and those great in
stitutions on which society is based, namely, mar
riage, property, civil government. Many leading
unbelievers have seen this, and have gone all
lengths with their principles. Of course the plaus-
ibleness that carries us so far, and ends in plun
ging us into such a pit, is nothing but jugglery.
Tempted to Unbelief. 1 1

82 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
So one should not conclude against faith on
account of specious appearances which ingenious
men have for the time contrived to conjure up
against it. But he should say, For all that witty
and caustic Voltaire has said, Theism and Chris
tianity may be as gloriously true and provable as
science itself, or even as the constellations which
some persons, on the strength of their metaphys-
icsf have so acutely and kindly informed us have
no existence save in our thoughts. Nor should
one conclude against faith because his own
thoughts are able to suggest to him what for the
time are showy difficulties in its way. You could
do as much against everything good, wise, fair,
sacred. Nothing is easier than objecting. An
acute mind can manage to find fault with any
thing beneath the stars, or above them. No
cause before the courts is so clear and just but
that some shrewd and wily advocate can befog it,
and finally, out of the fog, make the better seem
the worse to unskilled hearers, till his adversary
or the judge takes the case in hand and exposes
his sophistries. There is no historical fadt so
widely accepted by the public and so supported
by the consensus of authors and traditions but
that some Niebuhr can talk as plausibly against
it as did Whately against the earth-quaking Cor-
sican. There is no science, experimental or math-

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 83
ematical, however grounded in proofs and but
tressed by the uses and needs of mankind, and
radiant with the fame of great discoverers, but
can be dragged to the bar of some Pilate or Caia
phas of hypercriticism, and there so beaten and
spit upon that its best friends shall hardly be able
to recognize the disfigured king. Nay, even the
very alphabet of morals and the institutions com
monly supposed by decent people to be the postu
lates of civilization, are not beyond the peckings
of kites and ravens of objection and cavil that
know how to swoop down most gracefully on their
quarry — witness Materialists, Communists, Free-
lovers, Nihilists. Do we readily succumb to
such attacks ? or shall we for one moment think
of allowing that there is really nothing true, or
capable of being reasonably known as such, in
all the wide domains of justice, history, science,
and morals? Must we resign ourselves to such
a pit of skepticism? God forbid — if these un
believers will for a moment allow us to have a
God. We will still keep something to believe in.
We will not quite strip ourselves and come on the
town as intellectual paupers. So when certain
bright-witted men manage to put things plausi
bly against the Bible and God, we need not be in
a hurry to surrender our city at first summons.
The case will bear inquiring into. It may be

84 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
only another case of the jugglery so common in
the world. All is not gold that glitters. The
beautiful complexion may be due, not to health,
but to the artist's skill. So these showy dialectics
against religion may have no soundness to them.
Are the Roman legions defeated because certain
vexing Parthian arrows have come whistling
through the air? or is the moon bound to fall
because some Chinese fireworks have been let off
toward it? Despite the clever talking and wri
ting of that militant unbeliever — whether his
name be Bradlaugh or Ingersoll — it is by no means
certain that the fundamental doctrines of religion
are fictions, or even that they are not proven mag
nificently beyond all reasonable question. Have
patience. Look beneath the surface. Wash the
fair color on the cheek of that objection, and see
if it does not wash off. Rap on that solid-looking
argument, and see if it is not hollow. Possibly a
single rap of your knuckles may break through
the shell. If it resists your finger, try a hammer
upon it. If it resists your hammer, try that of
Socrates the son of Sophroniscus, or that of some
other redoubtable demolisher of shams. What
you cannot do to-day you may be able to do to
morrow, when in a brighter mood or better in
formed. What you cannot do yourself, your more
learned or experienced friend may do for you.

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 85
Very possibly some other unbeliever may come
along and save -both of you the trouble, by him
self knocking on the head the puzzling argument
of his brother skeptic — as has often happened.
At any rate, do not forget that there are other
juggleries than those of Trismegistus ; and that
when Christianity and Theism are speciously ob
jected to by some ingenious man, it may, after all,
turn out that they are true as Truth itself, and
provable as such by as good and convincing evi
dence as can be found in the world.

Words are like paints : an artist rare
Gan dip his brush and raise the dead,
Picture the cheek, set eye aflame,
O'er the dim brow the soul-beam shed.

Words are like dress : thank paint and rags,
Caliph Haroun walks forth a clown ;
Thank paint and robes, a common hind
Becomes Haroun and wears his crown.

Words are like stones : a builder true
Can mutely quarry, hew, and frame,
Till fane sublime sings psalms to God,
Or some usurper of his name.
Words are like swords : a master hand
Can slip Orion's sworded zone,
Then wheel and flash, put right to flight,
And seat base wrong upon its throne.

86 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
Words are like fireworks : who knows well
How to compound and use such wares,
Can give brave show in places dark,
And make his gases rain like stars.

Words are like body — thought the soul ;
111 housed was famous Socrates,
While puny Sophos dwelt within
Fair Phcebus, or vast Hercules.
Heed well your words — true coin or false,
Drugs that can either cure or kill ;
Bright swords that keenly cut two ways,
Smite God or Satan — as you will.

WHICH TO CHOOSE. 87
VII.
WHICH TO CHOOSE.
A certain king had a number of counsellors.
One of these was far superior to the rest in the
promptness, clearness, and excellence of the coun
sels he gave. Accordingly, he stood first with
his sovereign. Being found ten times better as a
counsellor than any of his companions, he was
thought ten times as much of, and his word was
easily commander-in-chief.
Daniel was not a perfect guide. I doubt
whether his king supposed him to be such. But
this did not prevent his from being the command
ing voice in the royal cabinet. It was enough
that, as an adviser, he was by far the best that
could be had — ten times better than all other
wise men in all the realm of Babylonia.
I commend Nebuchadnezzar. He acted rea
sonably, and as reasonable men act everywhere.
Suppose a traveller is at the junction of several
roads. Which shall he take? The enemy is
behind him; he can neither return nor delay;
which of the competing roads shall he take ? If
he is able to see that, on the whole, one of them

88 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
promises ten times better than any other, he asks
for nothing more. He thankfully and swiftly
takes it at once. And this though it does not
seem to him altogether free from objeftion.
A father is considering to what college to
send his son. He does not see that any one of
them is a perfect institution as to discipline or
scholarship, but he does see that there is a great
difference among them in these respects; and on
looking the ground well over, sees that there is
one ten times better than any competitor. This
is enough. It being a foregone conclusion that
his son is to be liberally educated, it is concluded
without hesitation where he must be sent. Neb
uchadnezzar has found his Daniel. The traveller
has found his best road.
On the same principle men choose their call
ing in life, their place of business, their partner
ships — in short, all their great undertakings.
They do not insist that they be free from objec
tions. It is enough that they appear vastly
superior to all competing undertakings.
If people would only act on the same principles
in religious matters, there is no doubt that they
would take the Christian religion with its doc
trines and practice as the guide of life. Is it not
ten times better for that purpose than anything
else they know of?

WHICH TO CHOOSE. 89
Think over the various religious systems
which offer themselves, and by one of which we
must order our lives. Shall it be that of Homer,
or Zoroaster, or the Grand Lama, or Confucius,
or Boodh, or Brahma, or Mohammed, or Paine,
or Joseph Smith, or Comte, or some other inde
pendent thinker, or yourself, or Jesus Christ?
With a wise man the question is merely this:
Which of these many guides is the most promis
ing? If one can be found which, all things
considered, is ten times more promising than any
other, then it must be accepted.
To a man of these times and countries the ques
tion can be considerably narrowed. He will throw
out of competition at once all the Paganisms, clas
sical and unclassical. They are mere rubbish.
Nor will he stop a moment to consider the claims
of Mohammedanism, Lamaism, or Mormonism.
Such bubbles burst of themselves when they
have have risen a few inches in the atmosphere
of just thought. The comparison lies between
Christ and yourself or some other well-informed
person or school of persons offering views as to
religion. Let us begin moderately. Among these remain
ing pet sons or schools will you find any religious
teacher less open to objection than Christianity and
its underlying Theism ?
Tempted to Unbelief. 12

9o TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
Many objections are brought against the Scrip
tures; some on literary grounds, some on scien
tific, some on historic, and some on moral. For
example, it is claimed by some that the Book is
inconsistent with itself; this passage contradidts
that; this doctrine or precept or fact does not
agree with some other. The charges are many.
Some do not care to measure their words, but
go so far as to say that the Bible is a tissue of
self-contradidtions. You, perhaps, do not care
to talk so recklessly; but you have had your dif
ficulties in putting this and that together. In
deed, do not Christian commentators confess such
difficulties and devote much space to attempts
at clearing them up, and not always with the
most brilliant success ?
Well, if there is any other religious, or irre
ligious, scheme less open to objections of all sorts
than the Christian, I would like to see it. I
have not seen it yet. Every special scheme-
founder profusely objects to the schemes of other
people. Even your own private scheme, on which,
perhaps, you greatly pride yourself, if once fairly
set before the public would probably be found as
fair a target for sharpshooters as any other.
What right have you to think that you would
fare better than such ingenious people as Hume
and Mill ? You have escaped because unknown.

WHICH TO CHOOSE. 91
To be read would be to be riddled. To appear
would be to disappear, if hard knocks of objec
tions could make you vanish. Your critics would
start up right and left ; would swarm at you like
bees with drawn stings; would say that you blow
hot and cold, east and west, diction and contra
diction in the same breath; in short, would show
you no mercy. You have only to become famous
enough to make it worth while. This, unless it
is lawful to assume that you are the greatest man
that ever lived, or that the world will be kind
enough to reverse for once its immemorial habit
in your favor. Nay it would be hard to show
that, for every plausible arrow shot at the Bible,
one might not shoot ten arrows as plausible at
any competing book you can mention, even
though you name that unwritten book which sets
forth your own private views on religious matters,
and, as you suppose, shoots sunbeams into the
world of religious speculation.
Will you find any of these religious teachers bet
ter furnished with positive evidence than is Christ or
God? You have known fault found with the Chris
tian evidences, arid even with the Theistic.
Some men of note have pronounced them in
sufficient, and even absurd. And somehow they
do not weigh with yourself as heavily as some

92 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
say they should; they seem to you very consider
ably short of demonstration.
Well, all I will just now ask is, Do you know
of any religious scheme that is better proven?
Suppose you should subject the proofs offered by
Comte — or any other person or persons — in behalf
of his Religion of Humanity to as exacting a cru
cible as you do the Christian proofs, would they
show any less dross ? Take that set of religious
notions and principles which you call your own,
your agnosticism, and which you have built up,
as some cities have been built up, partly from
original material, but more from the spoils of
previous structures — do you honestly think that
another person than yourself would judge your
proofs one whit better in quantity or quality than
those of Christianity? uTekel, Tekelf" he cries.
You are quite as light in your neighbor's balance
as he is in yours. And that is very light. To
be convinced of it you have only to publish, and
gain attention. Straightway all the horizon
thunders at you. You are a city attacked on all
sides at once. This has been the fate of all other
noted systems; why not of yours? Philosophers
are at swords' points with other philosophers.
Nobody is satisfied with another's arguments.
Neighbors are anything but neighborly. The
most a new schemer can do is to gather about

WHICH TO CHOOSE. 93
him enough disciples to found a school whose
struggle for existence with rival schools keeps
society in perpetual din, and does not always end
in the survival of the fittest. I will venture
thus far: if any should claim that Christianity
has ten times the breadth and variety and weight
of evidence that belong to any of its competitors,
not excepting that which calls you father or step
father, you would find it remarkably hard to dis
prove the claim.
Will you find any system that has been more
widely accepted among fair and discerning men ?
Yonder philosopher has a following. Count
his disciples — it will not be a very hard matter —
and estimate their quality. No-religion has a
much larger retinue: men whose principle is to
oppose or neglect every definite form of religious
creed. Count and estimate them. Some range
themselves under the banners of what they call
Natural Religion, meaning by it such excerpts
from the Bible dodtrines as the earlier modern infi
dels found themselves able to agree upon as being
agreeable to natural reason: such as the doctrines
of God, and human responsibility to him in an
other life. Note the quantity and quality of. these
men. Is there any other scheme that you think
worth noticing ? Try it in the same way. Then
proceed to examine the adherents of Christianity.

94 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
Will you find these less respectable in point of
number, ability, learning, candor, painstaking
investigation, life-long studiousness, than the fol
lowers of other systems ? Think over such names
as Newton, Boyle, Pascal ; and, if your knowl
edge of men and history is wide, you will see that
Christianity has at least no occasion to hang her
head among her rivals. Where is one that can
show a grander roll of discipleship ? That men
of shining abilities and attainments can be found,
to some extent, in almost every religious school,
is freely granted ; but if we move our telescope
backward over the ages we shall find successively
occupying our field of view such brilliant star-
throngs of believers as seem to defy competition,
and every now and then a very Milky Way of them.
If one fresh from such a review should declare
that nine out of ten of the world's Titans are to
be credited to Christ ; that his retinue is ten times
more kingly with such men than any other that
can be found, would you not find it hard to dis
prove him ?
Is any religious system more free from moral re
proach on the score of its disciples than the Chris
tian f
A certain man on being asked to become a
Christian, declined on the ground that he had
been brought up to keep good company. This

WHICH TO CHOOSE. 95
was sufficiently ridiculous. But it sharply voices
a reproach that Christianity has often to meet.
Well, we must confess in her behalf that bad men
can be found among her professed friends — -just as
bad men can be found among artists, authors, sci
entists, statesmen, kings — and that she is heartily
ashamed of not a few of her professors. But is
she alone troubled thus? I have yet to learn of
any scheme of religion or irreligion that, to say
the least, is any better off. Are there not bad
men among infidels, atheists, skeptics? Are there
none among Spiritists, Rationalists, Transcenden-
talists, Agnostics, Free Religionists, Intuitionists,
Positivists — whatever the name the unbelievers
in Christianity prefer ? Was Voltaire or Paine or
Comte a savory man ? Do their disciples never
stumble '; never make a particle of business for
courts of justice, prisons, hempen cords ? Nay, I
could uncover dreadful fadts just here. But I for
bear. Certainly, the church has no monopoly of
wickedness. I even suspect that it would be
found, on careful examination into the statistics
of vice and crime, that the unchurched world fur
nishes its full share of the shocking and shameful
and scandalous ; nay, that the men who believe
in a God who sees all wrong things even in their
seed-thoughts, and has forbidden them all in his
Scriptures, and has appointed a day in which he

96 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
will judge the world in righteousness, are ten times
more free from disgraceful courses than those who
have no such belief. From the nature of things
how can it be otherwise ?
Will you find any religious system that is safer
for the family and society at large than the Chris
tian ?
You are a father. You are naturally anxious
that your children should turn out well. For
their sakes and for your own you would keep
them from paths of vice and crime and shame;
would secure them to paths of honor, usefulness,
and principle. But they are headstrong. They
are greatly tempted. Their passions are eager,
their circumstances ensnaring, their moral strength
small, their experience nothing. Multitudes un
der like circumstances have brought themselves
and their friends to grief; and many a white head
has been brought down into the grave which filial
misconduct has dug for it. Casting about for safe
guards to these young fire-eaters and fledgling tem
pests, do you see any set of notions on the subject
of religion better fitted to serve your purpose than
the Christian ? Is any form of infidelity that you
know of likely to be a greater restraining and
guiding force ? Has not many a father rued the
day in which his son, becoming too wise for the
Bible, became too wicked to live out of prison ?

WHICH TO CHOOSE. 97
I cannot but think that, on looking the ground
well over, you would feel ten times safer as to the
future of your family in this world, to say nothing
of the next, were they firm believers in the Chris
tian religion.
So for any community. It is being dragged
downward by many and powerful gravitations.
You, a thoughtful man, with some knowledge of
men and history, and some interests at stake in
the matter, what set of religious ideas would you
think likely to be safest and most useful in the
place where you have adventured your property,
your good name, your comfort, and your home?
Is it atheism — or any of its sisters or cousins ? On
your conscience, man,- tell me. Suppose all these
people to become infidels of any type you please,
to-morrow, would your hopes in regard to the vil
lage, the State, the nation, so rise that you would
at once bid above par for its stocks ? Or would
you rather begin to shiver, and to think of the
Reign of Terror? Christianity builds a wall
about the peace and good order of society, shoots
the lightnings of two worlds at its assailants; and,
for one, I have no doubt that the man who should
undertake to prove that it is not ten times better
than any substitute that has yet been offered for
social ills and perils would find his task a most
difficult one.
Tempted to Unbelief. 1 3

98 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
Let us look at this matter more in the way of
definite examples. Leaving out of view such re
ligious systems as stand no chance whatever of
acceptance among intelligent men, how do such
systems as are found in our Christendom compare
with the Christian System in eligibility ?
I. Spiritism.
Various notions on religious matters come to
us, professedly, from departed spirits. These no
tions have been accepted by numbers, a few of
whom are men of culture and science. But on
looking at the system — if so vague and various a
thing can be called a system — we find much to
object to. We find the spirits flatly, continually,
and confessedly contradicting each other to an
enormous extent. Much of their teaching is as
much against reason and conscience and morality
as against self-consistency. The signs and won
ders relied on for proof are largely puerile, mostly
unserviceable, and at times even diabolical in
their aspect. Though here and there a scholarly
man (once scholarly) is found among the adhe
rents of Spiritism, yet for the most part its disci
ples are not, in intelligence, principle, or social
standing, such as to reflect credit on the views
they have embraced. Above all, its actual fruits
in society cry out against it. I know that an in
genious mind can plausibly object to anything:

WHICH TO CHOOSE. 99
but this Spiritism is an unwalled town, inviting
hostile incursions from all quarters, and getting
what it invites. Confess that it does not take
much hardihood for one to declare that it is ten
times more open to objection and less promising
as a guide of life than the Christian system.
II. Vulgar Infidelity.
Many of those who reject Christianity or The
ism as either false or unproven are not philoso
phers. They merely discredit the old faith on
some popular ground, without putting any defi
nite creed in its stead, or even attempting to do
so. They content themselves with negation and
no-religion'. ' ' Content themselves, " do I say ?
That is impossible — as impossible as it would be
for a sound-minded sailor who has lost confidence
in his old compass, chronometer, and pilot, to go
forward contentedly, with all sails set, through
unknown seas without any guide, and even with
out seeking for any.
Without a positive creed, on so important a
journey ! Without even an effort to obtain one !
How unreasonable ! Contrary to all the maxims
of worldly prudence and the habits of worldly
business. Also very insufficient for the needs of
our crooked, headstrong human society. Where
are the moral restraints of a system of negations ?
Where are its consolations and inspirations?

ioo TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
What would society come to with only so little to
restrain and reform as such a scheme offers ? Not
that infidels, or even atheists, are always quite
without the maxims of common morality; but
these maxims are quite without force and pen
alty, save such as come from conscience, public
opinion, and the law of the land — that is to say,
little or nothing in the case of very bad and reck
less men, and of that whole world of iniquity that
lies within a man and is the root of all outward
wickedness. Men can hope to escape all penal
ties save such as shoot from the tribunal of an
omniscient God. When all mankind reaches the
point which France reached about a century ago,
where its only religion is a refusal of all positive
religion, may I not be there to see. I am not so
fond of earthquakes, deluges, and conflagrations
that ' ' leave not a rack behind. ' '
Common infidels and atheists think it easy to
find plausible objections to Christianity and The
ism. Well, is it not fully as easy to object plaus
ibly to these objections ? Try it, as some of us
have done, and then say yes — and say it loudly.
Nay, I am inclined to think that if any one should
venture to assert that Infidelity is ten times more
open to objection and generally unpromising as a
guide than Christianity, you would hardly think
it much of a venture, but rather that he ven-

WHICH TO CHOOSE. 101
tures largely who undertakes to prove the con
trary. III. Philosophisms.
By these I mean schemes of notions in regard
to religious matters, resting on what is called a
philosophical basis. This basis at the present day
is generally materialistic.
Each of these schemes has but a slender fol
lowing. A knot of speculative people gather at
the Porch and call themselves Stoics; another
knot gather at the Lyceum and call themselves
Peripatetics; another at the Garden and call
themselves Epicureans; and so on. And these
little camps fortify themselves and begin to shoot
at each other with all their might. The arrows
darken the sun, and stand as thickly on each
leader as ever did gray-goose shafts on some un
lucky wight between two armies. That is to say,
each school profusely and sharply objects to every
other. Each finds an indefinite amount of soph
isms, self-contradictions, and puerilities in every
system save its own. Saving the exception, my
finding is the same. These many and various
philosophisms are construdted with about equal
ingenuity, defended with about equal plausibil
ity, and affirmed with about equal confidence.
Which of these shall I take ? Each of them is as
mutable as the castles of cloud-land when the

102 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
wind stirs freely. Which form of the swiftly-
changing Proteus shall I snatch at and try to re
tain ? We scarcely have time to get acquainted
with a philosophy before it becomes something
else. Platonism changes to Middle and New,
Epicurus gets unable to recognize his disciples
or himself, Comte becomes Mill, and Mill be
comes some one else. And the changes are so
rapid one may almost be pardoned for saying that,
to catch the phases of philosophical speculation,
one needs to be as active as a photographer taking
the phases of an eclipse, or of a Board of Brokers.
In fine, I object to all and singular of these
schemes — a large amount of mere guesses, assump
tions, non-sequiturs, not to say paradoxes — that,
being founded in materialism, they are opposed
to the traditions, consciences, habits, and com
mon sense of mankind as crystallized in innumer
able laws and institutions; that the proofs of
themselves which they offer (to say nothing of
their doctrines) are, from the nature of the case,
unintelligible to the great mass of mankind, and
so can never establish a religion for the people;
also, that if accepted by the people at large, there
would be great reason to fear (such has been the
experience of the world) the total overthrow of
society. Are you quite sure that such objections are not

WHICH TO CHOOSE. 103
on the whole quite as weighty as any that can be
brought against Christianity? Nay, should one
assert that Christianity is ten times more credible
as a guide than the best Philosophism that ever
undertook to supersede it, would you feel able to
disprove the assertion — even though it lies against
that favorite original or eclectic philosopher who
answers to your own name and cannot be distin
guished from you by nearest friends ?
Admit that no system of religious belief and
practice known to us is clearly better than the
Christian; that, on the contrary, if any man
put trumpet to his lips and challenge the world
to show another system a tenth part as good, as to
freedom from objections, as to strength and vari
ety of positive evidence, as to wideness of accept
ance, as to splendor of discipleship, as to general
usefulness and safety, he would not be likely to
find any well-informed person venturesome enough
to take up the gauntlet: what follows? This —
that it is ten times better to have Christianity for the
guide of life than any other religious system that
can be put in its place. For consider, Christian
ity is a venerable heir-loom. It has been tenderly
handed down to us through generations of revered
ancestors. It is now not only in possession of the
ground, but in entrenched possession. What
multitudes of churches deck the land ! What

104 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
thousands minister at its altars ! What millions
of money are invested in its great institutions !
How it has rooted and ramified itself in the fam
ily, in educational institutions, in governments,
in literature and art, in public manners and mor
als, so that it enters into the whole structure of
society very much as the veins and arteries do
into the human body. Can we weed out these
veins and arteries without trouble ? Is a chemist
likely to withdraw an element from a thousand
different compounds without some notable explo
sions in his laboratory ? To dislodge Christianity
from its place among us is to disorganize society.
We do it at the hazard of an earth-quaking revo
lution. Shall we be at all this trouble and peril
merely, to put in the place of Christianity some
thing that at the most is no better, and, for aught
one can prove, may be far worse? That were
wonderfully foolish. Under such circumstances, ,
whatever is is best — ten times best. A sailor had
far better keep on with his old chart, compass,
chronometer, pilot, which at least have served
him tolerably well, till he knows of something so
plainly better as to warrant the expense and trou
ble of a change. It is ten times better to con
tinue living in the old family mansion, with
whatever disadvantages it may have, than to be
at the trouble and expense of pulling it down

WHICH TO CHOOSE. 105
and setting up in its place a house not one whit
better, and perhaps very much worse. This is
such easy common sense that one almost feels like
making an apology for formally stating it.
For my part, I intend to live in the old
house till something plainly better offers. Nebu
chadnezzar will keep his Daniel; for, all things
considered, he is ten times better as a privy-coun
sellor than all the magicians and astrologers in
all the realm.

Tempted to Unbelief. 1 4

106 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.

VIII.
LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE.
All agree that we must adapt our conduct to
our actual surroundings. It will not do to sail
our ship regardless of the shoal here, of the reef
there, of the iceberg or rising tempest yonder; it
will not do to live in this nineteenth century as
if it were the ninth, in this republican America
as if it were monarchical Spain, in this noon of
summer as if it were the dead and dread of win
ter, in these times of peace as if in the throb of
the civil war.
Prudent men go farther than this. They feel
that their conduct must take into account not
only what certainly is, but also what may be.
Does one propose to himself a European excur
sion ? He sits down and counts the cost. It will
surely be a thousand dollars; it may be half as
much more. If he should be sick, or fail to make
certain connections — well, he will be on the safe
side. He will deposit with his banker enough
to cover possible expenses. How unpleasant it
would be to find himself without funds in a
strange land!

LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 107
On his way to the steamer our traveller no
tices a farmer hurrying his hay together with
might and main. What is the matter? Why,
the man has seen a hand-breadth of cloud on the
horizon, and has heard some mutterings as of
thunder. Is he sure that a thunder-shower will
soon drench his fields and greatly damage all the
crop left exposed ? By no means. He only thinks
such a thing possible. But then it concerns him
to provide against that possibility. He could ill
afford to lose several tons of capital hay, or sev
eral head of Jerseys in consequence of their eat
ing its musty ruins. Hence all this hurry. Ho,
men! sweep in the windrows! Pack heap upon
heap — till the long files of cocks stand sheathed
in their dreadnaughts of complete armor against
the assaulting elements. "He is doing," says
the traveller as he flashes by on his train, "just
what I have done. He is taking account of what
may be. ' '
And now the train is exchanged for the ship.
His baggage well settled in the state-room (where
he has not failed to notice and try on a life-
preserver), our friend walks forth on a round of
observation. He enters the saloon and finds there
.«
the inevitable medicine chests. He promenades
the deck as the Sea-Queen glides majestically out
of the harbor. Yonder, in long lines, hang buck-

108 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
ets and axes. Here, right and left, swing on
their cranes several lifeboats. All about are scat
tered firemen, seamen, and other hands in great
numbers — many of them with apparently little or
nothing to do.
' ' Good morning, captain ! we have made a
fair start of it; but do you really need so large a
crew as I see you have ?' '
"That depends. If the weather should be
favorable all the way, several of the hands might
be spared; but as we cannot be sure of that, we
are obliged to have the number you see. The
same with our provisions and coal. Probably our
supply of each is much larger than will be needed;
but should the wind be high and strongly ahead,
or should we be disabled by a storm, it would be
unfortunate to have less. For the same reason
we have duplicates of almost everything you see.
For the same reason, also, the steamer itself and
its cargo are insured — as I suppose are the lives
and houses of most of our passengers. Are not
yours ?' '
Does our friend wonder at what he sees and
hears? By no means. It is an old story with
him. He recognizes the way of prudent men
the world over; indeed, his own way. Is that
captain sure of a fire, a storm, a wreck, a sick
ness, a long voyage ? He confidently expects the

LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 109
contrary. Is it not midsummer? Has he not
passed the deep many times without mishap, till
his friends call him Captain Lucky ? His round
English face fairly shines with good-humor and
pleasant anticipations. But then unpleasant
things do sometimes happen at sea ; they are
among the possibilities of even his voyage; and
so he provides for what may be, as well as for
what he is sure of. Should he do otherwise, and
a catastrophe happen, all the newspapers would
bark at him, .or his memory, like Cerberus. And
they ought to.
Socrates looked around on the common fadts
of Athens, and drew from them a moral philoso
phy. A sage of wider fame than he, and one
whose doctrines have had far wider diffusion and
influence, made the common fadts of the field
and the street his trumpets for conveying to men
still sublimer lessons. Let us, for the time, be
disciples of these sages, and gather a lesson from
the manner in which prudent men are wont to
take account of possibilities in managing their
secular affairs.
I come to my neighbor with an urgent plea.
What I want of him above all things is that he
will distinctly undertake to order his life by the
teachings of the Bible. I assail him with the
whole Christian arsenal of persuasions. I tell

no TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
him the pathetic story of Jesus. I ply him with
the logic of gratitude and the logic of rectitude.
I appeal to him by the here and the hereafter.
In short I bring to bear on his unchristian posi
tion what seems to me a whole host of motives,
such as the best army is before battle has soiled
its plumes and disordered its array. Does this
army conquer? It ought to; and its victory is
life and royalty to the vanquished.
But I am disappointed. The man is a flint,
and looks flints. My waves are dashed into spray.
"Explain it, man: how is it that you can hear
unmoved such representations as I have just made
to you? One would think they might turn stones
into men, instead of men into stones, as they
appear to do. Tell me why I have used them in
vain." After some hesitation my neighbor says, "I
will be frank with you. I will tell you what is
yet a secret to my nearest friends. You wonder
that what you say makes so little impression on
me. Know then that the explanation lies here:
I am by no means sure of the truth of what you
tell me — of that future life, that heavy guilt, that
everlasting punishment, that divine Saviour, that
inspired Bible, even that personal God. No
doubt your conclusion is just, provided your
premises are so. But to me each of these prem-

LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. in
ises is a fog speared with an interrogation point.
If I were certain of their truth, as I am certain of
these mathematics or of yonder sun, do you sup
pose I would delay one single moment doing as
you urge? No, sir; I have too much regard to
my interests; the instinct of self-preservation is
quite too strong. I am not exactly a fool. If
some miracle or wonderful geometry could de
monstrate to me God and the Bible, you would
have no further occasion to complain of my slow
ness. My wheels would flash to your goal like
the lightning. ' '
What answer do I make to this man ? I tell
him that I am sorry, inexpressibly sorry, to learn
of his unbelief. I tell him that to my mind every
unbeliever is in a most deplorable and dangerous
condition; is, in fact, like a ship in Arctic seas
whose brief summer is just closing, and around
which the ice-packs are daily extending and com
pacting. Up, Sir John Franklin ! Up, officers
and all hands ! Lose no time. Spare no efforts.
Extricate yourselves while you may. I am by
no means sure that the thing can be done even
now. It is, however, worth a trial.
In very much the same way I would speak to
my unbelieving neighbor. Let him get out of
his unbelief at the earliest possible moment. The
situation is full of danger. At the same time I

ii2 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
assure him that he needs not such mathematical
evidence in order that he may reasonably be
called upon to order his life according to the
Christian doctrines and rules. It is enough that
God and the Bible are possible truths to him;
enough that he is not able to demonstrate their falsity
beyond all question. This being the case, con
sidering the absolute righteousness of the general
Christian life, and its plain tendency to useful
ness in every direction, he should proceed to it at
once. He is sure to lose nothing, and may gain
everything. He will only be doing what prudent
men are wont to do the world over — taking ac
count of the possible as well as the certain, occu
pying the safe side as travellers, as farmers, as
sailors, as insurers of all sorts. No man is on the
safe side in religion who does not recognize its
great doctrines as possibly true by acting as if
they were really so.
And are not God and the Bible as his message
at least possible truths to my neighbor? Even
such an unbeliever as John Stuart Mill was
obliged to say: " To the conception of the rational
skeptic it remains a possibility that Christ was
what he supposed himself to be— a man charged
with a special, express, and unique commission
from God." Who can prove to a dead certainty
that there is no Personal Designer of ourselves

LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 113
and of the wonderful embowering heavens and
earth ? to a dead certainty that the Bible did not
come from such a Being ? If he has never care
fully examined the subject, as ten to one he has
not, he of course is not entitled to answer affirma
tively. If he has examined, he has caught what
seemed at least glimpses of such things as these:
that a God is the most intelligible, simple, sure,
complete and salutary explanation of nature; that
the logic which is good against Him is about
equally good against the foundation principles
of right and wrong; that Christianity is greatly
superior to every other known scheme of religion,
has a beneficial tendency, is well adapted to
human nature and conditions, has wide accept
ance among the ablest and best, is extremely apt
to grow in favor with men as they grow in virtue,
is formidably attested by what seem prophecies,
miracles, and answers to prayer, is startlingly in
accord with archaeology and many- voiced science.
He has noticed so many such things that it is
quite impossible that he should be totally without
misgivings in taking ground against God and the
Bible. He may still doubt them, but he cannot
feel absolutely sure that they are false. There is
not a thoughtful man in all the world who feels
competent to take such ground. He may express
himself with utter confidence — unbelievers have a
Tempted to Unbelief. I C

ii4 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
way of doing that — you might think, judging
from his words and look alone, that the base of
his pyramid is as broad as a continent, not to
say the universe; but, between you and me, this
is a man who could hardly be persuaded to go
forth in the solemn night to yonder hilltop, and
there, under the witnessing and listening stars,
lift up his hand defiantly to the heavens and
challenge the eternal wrath of God and of his Son
Jesus — if indeed there be such Beings. He would
shrink from it as from a terrible venture. Yet
why should he hesitate if he is altogether sure
that the action would be quite safe, there being
no such Beings to take offence at the insult?
Just as all trees tremble to the breeze, though the
oak less than the willow; just as all waters ripple
to the same impulse, though fresh water less
than salt, and the ocean less than the Dead sea,
so all men, though their names be Voltaire and
Hume, in their measure waver before the Chris
tian and Theistic Evidences, especially in the
honest death-hour.
Under these circumstances it is plain what the
man should do. He should at once proceed to
live according to the Christian doctrines and
rules, the falsity of which he cannot demonstrate.
Then he will be on the safe side. Should the
religion at last prove false, he has only lost a

LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 115
brief labor and self-denial; nay, let us not speak
of loss at all in connection with so right and use
ful and noble a thing as a true Christian life is on
all hands confessed to be. Should the religion at
last prove true, he has saved an immortal soul;
for he has that which, according to the Scrip
tures, will surely lead to such a result. How
much the salvation of a soul means, let him tell
who can. It would take greater words than I
have at command, greater thoughts than ever
rushed as suns through the empyrean of human
or angelic genius. What can a man give in ex
change for a soul — that pearl that outweighs and
outshines the heaviest astronomical sphere? So
he has escaped the risk of an infinite loss, and put
in its stead the chance of an infinite gain. He is
like the prudent traveller who provides for possi
ble expenses of his journey; like the prudent far
mer who secures his crop against the possible
shower; like the sailor whose sea-going outfit aims
so largely to secure against possible disasters.
Like them, but with this difference: these men,
in case their possible does not prove actual, will
have all their trouble and expense for nothing,
save the satisfadtion all along of feeling that they
are the safer for what they have done. He, under
like circumstances, will have all his trouble and
expense for something — a mighty something; for

n6 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
that general mode of living involved in practical
Christianity is so good and grand in itself, apart
from any governmental consequences, that it may
well be compared to a king the best part of whose
royalty consists in a right royal nature, in whose
superber majesty his shining sceptre and diadem
disappear, as disappears the farthing candle of
the peasant in the golden floods of the ripened
morning. Yes, it is plain what the unbeliever should do
under these circumstances. Instead of acting as
if absolutely and demonstrably sure that there is
no truth in religion — as he is now doing — he
should act as if its truth were at least possible,
and put himself on the safe side of the possibility.
To do otherwise while carefully taking account
of possible calamities in worldly matters, and in
suring against them, is as if a man should care
fully insure his pigsty against fire, and leave un
insured his great and costly mansions and ships.
It is, in fadt, so outrageous an imprudence that a
man perpetrating it might well be supposed equal
to any hair-brained venturesomeness whatever —
even to abusing a religion known beyond all ques
tion to be true. What assurance can one have
that a man who, with eyes open, runs against a
New England boulder would not run himself
against a solar system in full career?

LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. n7
The man, we will suppose, yields to such con
siderations. He concludes to take the advice of
Blaise Pascal (which indeed it did not need his
great genius to give), "Let us weigh the gain
and the loss in taking heads that God exists. If
you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose noth
ing. Wager, then, that God is, without hesita
tion." He concludes not to wait for the demon
strations of miracle or of mathematics before un
dertaking to govern his life by Christianity as a
practical system. Its possible truth shall be his
sufficient warrant. What then ? I answer, faith.
Not at once, perhaps or probably, but gradually,
as breaks the morning in high latitudes. That
such a Being as the Bible represents God to be
would be likely to reward well-doing according to
light with more light, is a plain matter. But
nature itself is mighty just here. Who does not
know that good living is a most wholesome thing
intellectually; that right aims, right feelings, and
right conduct tend powerfully to right opinions;
that all forms of goodness are to the soul what
sunrise is to a fog or charcoal to foul water, viz. ,
a clearing up ? It has been known from the time
of Socrates, not to say of Adam; and out of this
bullion a thousand adages have been coined and
are current gold in our speech and literature to
day. So Jesus only spoke in the line of human

118 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
experience when he said, ' ' If any man will do
His will he shall know of the doctrine;" "He
that doeth truth cometh to the light." Here is a
spring, covered by the long green grass, and quite
too much overlooked, at which even the logical
faculty can get refreshment and healing. If un
believers would gather about this Siloam as
eagerly as men do about some fashionable Baden
or Saratoga, and drink as freely and as regardless
of expense, they would get vastly more benefit.
Their souls would straighten up. The fires would
be renewed in the eye and cheek of the debilita
ted, reasoning, truth-perceiving faculty; and the
whole sick thinker would find his flesh coming
back to him like that of a little child. Try it,
dyspeptic thinker ! Try it, ye who think lep
rosy ! Try it, ye men who seem stone-blind
toward God and his Bible: go wash in Siloam,
and come seeing !
If the Bible is really true, its truth will be
come clearer and clearer to the well-doing and
praying soul; if not true, that fact will grow more
and more manifest. Any way, there is light
ahead. The fadts will come out. He is facing
and moving eastward; and if he does not sooner
or later arrive at the Gates of Day, it will be be
cause the wheels of nature have gone back
ward.

LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 119
Yes, it may be true — yonder mountain of rock
Which men call the Bible, that so scorns the shock
Of crested ages as they sweep to the charge,
And dashes them backward in foam from its targe.
It may be true — like that other true book
Which men call Nature, that seems to their look
So fair and so grand, with its great starlit page,
That they fall on their knees and worship — The Age !
It may be true — for it bids to all right,
And sees never a wrong which it does not smite ;
Yet seeks, like a shepherd, the lost on the wold,
And woos back the world's lost Age of Gold.
It may be true — many wisest and best
In seeking a Word, have here ended their quest:
Our Magi have seen a new star in the East,
And come in due time to one Jesus, the Christ.
And if it be true— then right happy the man
Who lays out his life on its heaven-taught plan !
They who cleave to the good, and the evil refuse,
Have all things to gain, and just nothing to lose.
And if it be true— then alas for the man
Who has all things to lose and nothing to gain !
Whose life is as though it were clear as the sun,
The foes of the Bible their battle have won,
And shown it a wrecker on a storm-swept shore,
Watching for ships that shall sail no more,
And setting up false lights to shine o'er the main,
That true lights may sink and shine never again.

i2o TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.

IX.

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE.
It is found that many plain Christians, who
have never made any scholarly investigation into
the merits of their religion, and who indeed have
never been able to do it from lack of faculty or
leisure, are yet possessed of a very strong faith.
The sneers and arguments of the most gifted and
plausible unbelievers make no impression on
them. In times of faint-heartedness and waver
ing they stand firm as the hills. They need no
buttressing on this hand and on that from public
opinion. They evidently could go to prison and
to death, if necessary, in behalf of their religion.
Such persons have been found in every age.
The vast majority of Christians have always been
without any learned investigations into the foun
dations of their faith. And yet not a few of
them, by the lives they have lived, by the sacri
fices they have made, by the sufferings they have
undergone, by the martyrdoms they have freely
and even joyfully submitted to, have given the
best of evidence that their faith is real and pro
found.

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 121
Is the attitude of such men irrational? Be
cause they have not technically argued out their
religion, because they have not fought their way
through libraries of apologetics, because they are
incompetent to sustain a debate with ingenious
opposers, have they therefore no good reason for
the faith that is in them ? Do not think it. They
have' the very best foundation for their indomita
ble Theism and Christianity, viz. , Experience.
They have "tasted and seen." So to speak,
they have felt their way to their great confidence.
Their reason, instead of approaching religion
through the abstract forms of logic and scholarly
inquiry, has come to it through their eyes and
ears and hands and consciousness and daily life.
Let us examine the experience of one of these
illogical and yet indomitable believers. We will
call him Homo.
First came what I will call Homo's experience
of human nature — that original stress on his views
and feelings which comes from his very constitu
tion as a man.
Is there any truth in the old, old saying that
man is a religious being ?
We are told that a man who was curious on
this question once submitted it to the test of
experiment. He placed an infant in a hermitage.
He took care to have none in charge of the child
Tempted to Unbelief. 1 6

122 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
as he grew who would in word or act lisp aught
religious. He made the walls of that retreat
thick and high, to shut off contact with a super
stitious world. Lest some microscopic germs of
the religious notions with which the outside air
is charged should float in on his little patient, he
sifted the air as carefully of its " fungous ' ' motes
as does Tyndall in his experiments on spontane
ous generation. One human being, at least,
should be brought up without religious "biases
and prejudices" of any sort. Thus guarded the
child grew. But one morning he was found in
the garden on his knees to the rising sun. He
must have something to worship.
In every known age the great masses of man
kind have believed, not only in Deity, but in a
human soul distinct from the body, in a future
after death for that soul, and even in that future
as being retributive for the present. Whence
come these beliefs ? If one says that they came
from near the sources of the race, and . gradually
ramified with it through many countries and '
ages, still we have to ask ourselves how they
have managed to hold on their way with unaba
ted force so long and widely in a world of many
obstacles,* and overrun by change ? Is there any
explanation so good as that they are the children
of human nature itself— born of its instinfts and

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 123
needs, nourished at its breasts, and in their jour
ney through the world pressed from behind by its
forces and on its tramways ? How do we know
that any plant is native to the soil ? Is language
natural, or government, or parentage, or love of
our children, or playfulness in the young of all
animals? Then why not these international
faiths, which are found about as widely among
unsophisticated mankind, and defy equally well
the assaults of time and circumstance ?
Homo began with the experience of these
subtile winds and currents toward faith that set
in upon him from human nature itself. The
lake-bed, scooped out by nature's own hands, with
some living springs at the bottom of it, is now
ready to receive streams from every quarter —
streams of faith — from the sky, from the water
shed that embraces it on nearly all sides, and
from such channels as some Cyrus may dig for
some diverted Euphrates. A natural foundation
for the temple exists — the temple of faith; a
quaking bog does not need to be made into solid
ground, nor do first stones need to be imported
from Sidonian quarries ; they are already fash
ioned and in place, like some immemorial Egyp
tian pediment, all ready to be built upon by the
first fit workman who chances along.
2. The experience of Christian nurture.

124 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
From the beginning Homo's parents taught
him the reality of God, and the truth of the Bible
as a message from God. In accordance with this
teaching his practical habits were started. He
lisped prayer at his mother's knee. She graved
ineffaceably into his memory the Commandments^
sacred hymns, easy Bible verses, before he could
fairly read them. When he could read the Bible
for himself he was put upon reading it daily;
and the day must neither rise nor set without
seeing him bending over the Book, and before its
Author. He was bred not only to the closet, but
also to the family altar, the prayer-meeting, the
Sabbath-school, the sanctuary, and an elevdt Chris
tian society. So, all through his childhood, he was
zoned about by believing forces and breathed a
believing atmosphere. He scarcely touched any
thing that was not saturated with faith. A
thousand subtile influences that implied the truth
of the Christian religion were ever stealing in
upon him on all sides, from the words he heard,
the examples he saw, and the books he read in
that careful Christian home.
The effect of such nurture was, of -course, to
greatly reinforce those natural tendencies to faith
of which I have spoken. The boy fully accepted
what he was told. He allowed this assent to
become buttressed about by those many ways of

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 125
Christian living. And, considering what his pa
rents were, how truthful, intelligent, and good he
knew them to be, he did rightly. The course of
training they put him upon was just as reasonable
as their views; and their views were to him the
best accessible. Whose views should he take if
not theirs ? So he yielded to the loving pressure
brought to bear upon him and began to run in
those grooves of faith which both nature and his
parents had prepared for him.
Thus, warm, moist, vaporous, gently weeping
skies, day after day and month after month (such
as geologists say nourished the vegetation of the
young earth and filled its virgin hollows) made
large contributions to the springy lake-bed which
was found in Homo's human nature itself.
3. Experience with Testimony.
As he grew and his observation widened, he
became aware that not only his parents and the
best of those just about him, but a multitude of
others in many countries and ages must be counted
as thorough believers in Christianity. He saw it
predominant among the most enlightened and
prosperous nations. He came by degrees to know
that among these nations the firmest believers are
in general the best and best-informed men; and
that leading unbelievers, especially those who
have furnished the arsenal of unbelief, are apt to

126 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
be as eminent for moral unworthiness as for un
belief. Further, he learned that not a few of the
greatest, most learned, and most conscientious
minds the world ever saw have examined the
Christian Evidences most carefully and testified
to their sufficiency. Indeed, he saw among their
champions men of unsurpassed powers and ac
complishments; never was strength doughtier,
skill more perfect, blade keener, trumpet louder
or more tuneful: for has he not come to know of
Newton and Locke and Boyle and Brewster and
Pascal and Milton and many another in whose
persons science, and literature, and eloquence,
and statesmanship, and business have humbly
bowed before the Scriptures, and taken from them
opinions, law, and immortal hope ?
Such testimonies appealed' to even his youth
ful experience. It , had taught him to allow
weight to such testimonies. From the first he
had been wont to take a great variety of things
on the word of others. He had been wont to see
those about him doing the same in every-day life,
in the gravest business matters, in courts of jus
tice, and and even in matters of science. Whence
came his Geography and History, whence his
elementary Astronomy and Geology ? And other
sciences, whose full orbs were not yet above his
horizon, sent their twilights before them to tell

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 127
him that they too would have to be accepted on
the basis of fadts and experiments for the most
part known only from the report of others. And
his gradually accumulating observation and ex
perience had been to the effect that what every
body was in the habit of doing was really the fit
thing to be done; that it is not only best, but
even necessary, to found life largely on the testi
mony of other people; always stipulating that
the testimony be that of competent and princi
pled persons. But who are competent and prin
cipled witnesses, if not those who solemnly lift
up their right hands in court in behalf of Chris
tianity? What nations can be trusted in the
witness-box, if not those of Christendom ? What
class among these nations can be taken at their
word, if not those intellectually and morally most
worthy ? What individuals in this class ought to
have special weight allowed to their emphatic
affirmations of the reasonableness of religion and
the sufficiency of its evidences, if not those great-
minded and painstaking and conscientious inves
tigators whose names illumine mankind? And
what persons ought to have their denials of reli
gion heavily discounted from, if not such super
ficial and unscrupulous men as are specimened
by Voltaire and Paine ? To such questions the
experience of our young friend, brief as it had

128 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
been, seemed to give ready answer. Good testi
mony is good evidence; and in yielding to the
Christian testimony he would yield not only to
good testimony, but to the best to be had. So he
yielded. And the faith within him, grounded in
his nature and training, grew apace.
Thus the natural lake-bed, with its living
springs at the bottom, and into which the atmos
phere weeps daily through all the spring-time,
now gets contributions from many a little fountain
that trickles down into it from the whole sur
rounding water-shed, away to the distant moun
tains. 4. Experience of secular faith.
From his earliest years he had been wont to
yield such faith on a simple preponderance of
probability. He had found his fellow-men uni
versally doing the same. What all men do, save
when under the influence of prejudice or passion,
his experience taught him was fit, and even nec
essary, to be done. He found few things demon
strable. He found fewer still beyond ingenious
cavil. If he should withhold faith in everything
that can be speciously objected to, he would not
believe in much. His eyes gradually opened
widely on this. So he was put on his guard
against religious cavils. So he was not unreason
able in his demand for religious evidence. He

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 129
would content himself with such and such meas-
sure of evidence as human life is wont to be
conducted on. And the consequence was that
his young faith did not suffer under ingenious at
tacks as it would otherwise have done, while it
was daily finding more to feed it. His field for
foraging was wider. No wonder that he gathered
more. Sheaves that seemed to others too small
to be noticed went to swell his harvest; and by
degrees the littles amounted to much.
Thus the lake-bed welcomed into its bosom
many a brooklet which formal geographers did
not care to put down on their map.
5. Experience with doubt.
There are questions in regard to which sus
pense of mind is no trouble at all. Where nothing
is at stake, why should one be troubled? But
the moment some great interests of his are seen to
hinge on the way in which, he answers the ques
tion, then suspense becomes painful, perhaps
exquisitely so. Our friend Homo had ample
experience of this. In matters purely secular he
felt- the unrest, the subtile ache, the wretchedness
of "halting between two opinions."
But his experience with doubt was not entire
ly secular. He knew what it was to have, occa
sionally, distant skirmishes with religious doubt.
The fairest day is liable to some clouds; foul
Tempted to Unbelief. 1 7

i3- TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
weather sooner or later appears in the most fa
vored latitudes; men who are never laid up with
disease do sometimes have unpleasant touches of
it; much- voyaging barks will in time cross at
least the penumbra of some eclipse or the outer
circles of some cyclone. Here the waves and
thunders are nearly spent; but as the sailor tosses
uneasily he can get a very good idea of what it
would be to be tossing in the very heart of the
tempest. So our friend, tossing on the edge of
doubt, got a very good idea of what it would be to
toss at the stormy centre. It would be no lullaby
cradle, no delightfully swaying summer hammock^
but something dreadful — an agony of suspense.
This experience with doubt, secular and reli
gious, disposed him to shrink from it, and from
all the paths leading to it. "A burnt child
dreads the fire." One who has fallen down a
precipice does not care to play on brinks, or any
where near them. And our friend did not care
to play with doubt or even with any of its remote
cousins, as too many do, but rather gave them a
wide berth. And reasonably. He did not see
any good that could come to him or others from
his falling into an unsettled mind as to God and
the Bible; and he did see the threat of very con
siderable discomfort and harm — not to say confla
grations and precipices.

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 131
And so the natural lake-bed went on receiv
ing streams which naturally descended into it,
but which, save for the care taken to keep them
free, would have become choked and diverted
elsewhere. 6. Experience of conviction.
Weak, depraved, prone to guilt by a gravita
tion as steady, powerful and omnipresent as that
which carries a dropped stone to the ground — this
view of human nature, far more darkly colored
than any found in the schemes of so-called philos
ophy or of popular opinion, is steadily held up as
the true one by the religion of Christ. Over
against this view of man it sets another of God,
as frowning on the sinner in the terrors of infinite
indignation and justice. No unbeliever takes
such a view of either himself or God. At the
most such a view seems to him only poetry or
oriental hyperbole. He does not seem to himself
half as bad as the Bible paints him; nor can he
think that God is half as ' ' angry with the wicked
every day " as the Bible declares. What, "dead
in trespasses and sins"! What, "the heart of
the sons of men fully set in them to do evil ' ' !
What, " the flesh having no good thing dwelling
in it"! What, "the heart deceitful above all
things, and desperately wicked" — and "God a
consuming fire"! This is altogether too strong

132 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
a pidture to express his idea of either the creature
or the Creator; too strong, indeed, to express the
sense of things had by Homo up to the present
time; for though he accepts the Bible, he has
read many things in it as though he read them
not, and, like the Jews of old, he has still a veil
untaken away in the reading.
But now he enters on a new phase of experi
ence. Hitherto he has been facing religion as a
theory; now in some way he has come to face it
as a practice. And the first steps he takes in the
new direction begin a revelation. The plague of
his own heart proceeds to manifest itself. The
veil rises, not only from before his own bosom,
but also from before the character of God as a
hater and punisher of sin. He is startled, shocked.
He had no idea that the case was so bad. It
flings a gauntlet in the face of all the popular
theories. He is not more ashamed when he looks
within than he is alarmed when he looks above.
At the same time the veil rises from before the
Scriptures. He sees a new book. Its words
about the lost state of man before a holy God
blaze at him with a fiery significance, somewhat as
the handwriting on the wall at Babylon did on
the eyes of the banqueters. How surprisingly they
match the facts as he has just learned them ! All
other systems wrong; the Christian system right.

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 133
All others flatter man and abridge God; this is
rigorously accurate. He feels as in the presence
of one who has original and divine sources of
information. Thus the waters rise in the lake-bed as another
stream comes pouring in from the mountains;
and as Homo's experience confirms the account
which the Scriptures give of both man and God.
7. Experience of Regeneration.
After being convinced of sin and Sinai, and
coming to the point of despairing of all human
help by merely human means, on some white day
our friend awoke to the fact of a total revolution in
his tastes and aims and motives. Was it his own
work? His experience had taught him to the con
trary. He had tried again and again; but some
how, while finding himself able to do sundry out
ward adts belonging to a Christian life, he found
himself quite powerless to reach and dislodge
the native enemies intrenched deep within him.
What, not by a supreme effort ? He gathered all
his forces, and, by a desperate struggle like that by
which a strongly kept fortress is sometimes taken
has he at last dispossessed the enemy and occupied
the citadel within with a new garrison and a new
government? Alas, he cannot see that he has made
the least impression. But he does see that, some
how, that inner world is inaccessible to his sword.

i34 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
Just then it was, while quite discouraged as to his
own efforts to deliver himself, he found himself
delivered. He was seemingly in a new world.
Old things had passed away; behold, all things
had become new. He had been born again; and
some outside power had stepped in among the
springs and foundations of his being, where he
could not go himself, and had done the indispen
sable miracle. He was at no loss to know what
that power was.
Now he had read in the Scriptures of all this —
and only in the Scriptures. Christ had spoken of
this new birth which is "not by might nor by
power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord:" all
other teachers were either silent or contradidting
as to it, and to nearly all persons save Christians
it had an aspect of mystery and even incredibility.
Born again! how unintelligible, and unlikely,
and unnecessary in your eyes, O boasting exalter
of natural humanity. The rational way, so-called,
of explaining things would explain the marvel
all away, or at least narrow it down to a feat of
mere manhood. But there is one person at least
who knows better. His experience has settled the
matter. It seems that the Scriptures are right.
They alone have stated things as they are, and
put the theory of a new life on its proper founda
tion. It is only in connection with them that

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 135
such radical transformations of character take
place; they alone include a regenerating divinity
who does for man what man cannot do for him
self. Homo does not need to go outside of his
own personal history to know that the secret of
the Lord is with the Bible and Christ: that these
are the only possessors of the talisman for trans
ferring character from death to life. Surely,
there is small room for unbelief in a man who has
felt the omnipotence of God regenerating him on
the basis of the Christian Scriptures.
Accordingly, the lake-bed is fast becoming
full. That last broad, deep stream from the
mountains has nearly covered all the sand bars
and islands.
8. Experience of wholesome adaptations.
Before this, Homo had noticed in a vague way
the wholesome tendency of the Christian religion.
So far as it had affected him, the effeft had been
salutary: restraining as with a bridle at points
where he needed restraint; urging forward as with
a spur at points where he needed urging. And
his own experience, he knew, was that of all
about him. They had all felt Christianity as a
sort of oxygen in the general atmosphere, stimu
lating spiritual life. They had all felt it as a
gentle lifting power, pressing society with all its
immense gravitations upward under its whole

136 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
broad base. Indeed, as a result of his experience
with himself and others, he had come to see, if
not to say, that if society were to yield itself fully
to this gentle, persuasive up-lift, it would soon
rise into the mid-heaven of a golden age.
But now that he has become regenerate, he
has come into a fuller knowledge of the Bible,
and yields himself more fully to its influences.
As a result, he understands these influences bet
ter. Even as there is nothing like living in the
same house with a man for finding out what he
is, so there is nothing like practising Christianity
to let one into the secret of its quality. And that
quality our now practical Christian finds to be
supreme^ finds that the religion he has come to
live with is even more aromatic and sweet-tem
pered and helpful than he had supposed.
His Christian experience goes on. And as it
goes on, his sense of the general adaptation of
Christianity to the various needs of human na
ture and life goes on strengthening. He often
finds himself weak; but also finds on trial that
his religion, beyond anything else, has a faculty
for giving strength. He finds himself, from time
to time, afflicted in many ways; but he also finds
that his religion is great in its power to sustain
and comfort. Tempted and sinful is he still from
day to day; but he has daily fresh experience of

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 137
the upholding and conquering power of the truth
as it is in Jesus. He finds it quite incomparable
in these respects. Its promises meet his purest
and highest aspirations. Its precepts satisfy his
conscience. The hopes it suggests, the fears it
appeals to, the tastes and convictions it cherishes,
buttress his infant virtue on every side. He finds
no exigency to which it cannot minister, no strait
place which it cannot enlarge, no low place which
it cannot exalt, no vacancy which it cannot fill.
For every side of his want it seems to have an an
swering side of help. Each varying aspect of his
heart and life finds itself matched by some ade
quate spiritual provision which it holds invitingly
forth in radiant hand. It seems made for him, or
he for it, the mutual adjustment is so exquisite.
Not more exquisite is the adjustment of ball to
socket, of light to eye, of air to lungs, of the fruit-
bearing earth, with its trees and waters and moun
tains and mines of coal and oil and iron and gold,
to the various needs of society. Look where he
will, he can see no friend so resourceful and gen
erous as this. No, not on all his wide horizon —
whether his need be daily bread, or pardon, cour
age, hope, sympathy, comfort, strength, knowl
edge, goodness, usefulness, heaven. Ah, is not
the Gospel just such a comprehensive and versa
tile helper as one would naturally look for from
Tempted to Unbelief. 1 8

138 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
God? When experience has taught him that it
is a west wind bringing fair weather, a food re
freshing and nourishing, a medicine curing pains
and sickness, a money that ' ' answers all things " —
shall he not believe in it ? He does believe more
than ever. Daily his experience builds away at
his faith. Annex to annex, year by year the tem
ple is sensibly more vast and symmetrical. Or,
if you remember the natural lake-basin into which
waters have now for some time been trickling and
purling and sometimes pouring, until all sand
bars and bleak islets have nearly disappeared — lo,
the roar of another mountain stream is in my ears,
and the sweet, clear water creeps up the green
banks till the gleaming, heaven-imaging mirror
stretches unbroken from shore to shore.
9. Experience of Atialogies.
These analogies are of two sorts: first, those
between actual nature and that ideal nature, which
one might reasonably look for from such a being
as God; second, those between actual nature and
the Bible, especially as to difficulties in the way
of believing them to be from God.
Given such a God as the Bible speaks of, and
we should expect that a nature from his hands
would be vast, enduring, various (though with
certain great veins of unity running through it),
presided over by law, prodigious in its dynamics,

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 139
abounding in miracles of contrivance, showing in
wonderful mixture the beautiful, the grand, the
gentle, the awful, and the mysterious — and so on.
On turning to the adtual nature we find in it all
these traits; and scholarly inquiry is able to show
other resemblances to almost any extent.
There are also striking resemblances between
the scheme of nature and the Scriptures. It is
objected to the Book that it has not yet found its
way to all mankind: neither have the natural
sciences. It is objected to the Book that it came
into the world in detached portions and at differ
ent times: but so have come all the systems of
knowledge and art in our possession. It is ob
jected to the Book that in parts it is obscure and
even as yet impossible to be understood: and yet
how like this is to that book of nature which
sages have pored over for thousands of years, and
still have hardly begun to understand. It is ob
jected to the Book that it is open to different inter
pretations, and that different sects contend over
the same passage with equal sincerity and heat:
but is not as much true of the laws of health, the
laws of mind aiid matter, the laws of the land —
many of which are read different ways by ingeni
ous men, and disputed over quite as warmly as
any theological question ? It is objected to the
Book that it has its counterfeits and rejecters, its

140 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
Apocryphas, Korans, Antichrists, infidels: pray,
has not almost every natural truth over against it
an error that apes it, and tries to pass for it, and
takes its name, and enlists supporters ? It is ob
jected to the Book that it teaches a God of vast
severity as well as gentleness: but is not just this
sort of God seen everywhere in nature ? That it
teaches a limited probation for man: but is not
nature full of such probations ? That it teaches
salvation by atonement and mediatorship of an
other: but are not the world and the ages full of
deliverances by such means? These are speci
mens from a long list of things on account of
which the Bible is objected to, all of which have
their counterparts in the book we call nature.
And so the mind is drawn toward the idea of a
common authorship for both.
Now Homo never formally set himself down
to- study out these analogies; never even distinctly
stated them to himself after the manner of philos
ophers; yet, living for years in the midst of both
nature and Christianity, with that openness of
mind that belongs to those who have come into
sympathy with God and his works, he has insen
sibly drunk in a vague sense of the fadt that such
analogies do exist and even reign. Does not a
blind man often perceive the general likeness of
two rooms to each other, on entering and speak-

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 141
ing in them, without individualizing the points of
agreement? Homo has not individualized; but
somehow his mind has unconsciously secreted
from his surroundings a sense of the exceeding
likeness of that room which we call Revelation
to that other vaulted room which we call Nature,
and of both to that ideal room which one might
reasonably look for from a Divine Builder. It
came to him as in a mist. He secreted it as
quietly and unconsciously as the various organs
of the body secrete flesh and bone and sinew. He
absorbed it as insensibly as a plant with its thou
sand leaves and rootlets absorbs moisture and heat
and every needed element from air and soil; never
noisily, never in masses, always in a state of un
speakable division. As the sap steals up the trees
on the approach of spring, as the dew settles on
the green earth in the still summer eve, as dewy
sleep settles on the slowly-closing eyelids of
healthy babes the whole year round, so softly set
tled the feeling of these wonderful harmonies into
the soul of Homo out under the open sky of his
Christian experience.
And what did these harmonies, softly descend
ing about his faith like innumerable snowflakes,
do for it? They whitened and brightened it.
They imbedded and supported it. Each like
ness of actual nature to that which God would

1 42 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
naturally be expected to make, is an encourage
ment to believe in Him. Each difficulty in the
Bible that sees over against itself in nature a twin
difficulty, goes for nothing with a man who be
lieves that nature is from God. Each whispers
to faith, "It looks as if you were right." And
though each whispers with a voice so tiny that
separately it cannot be heard, yet the chorus of
these whispers, especially in that whispering gal
lery of a renewed soul, needs no microphone to
interpret it. The ' ' cloud of witnesses ' ' makes
itself distinctly audible. It is as audible as the
cloud itself is visible — a cloud no single vapory
particle of which can be seen by itself, but whose
aggregate easily appears to the eye, and perhaps
shines forth as a cloudy glory where the setting sun
is picturing in gems and gold a bright to-morrow.
And now the lake, whose waters had crept up
the green banks till it was all one unbroken mir
ror from shore to shore, sees its crystal flood rise
still higher, as day after day it has lain 'drenched
in morning mists that were almost rains — a water
without shallows, a water to swim in, a water
which geographers begin to think deserving of
notice and name.
io. Experience with prayers and promises^
From the outset of his Christian life our friend
had been receiving answers to prayer and fulfil-

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 143
ments of Scripture promises; generally in a very
quiet way and in no striking form. There was
nothing that one could tell to convince gainsay
ers; still, on the bosom of his current of experi
ence as a praying person, there gradually drifted
in upon him many tokens, whose aggregate was
at length very considerable, that he was dealing
with a prayer-hearing God. And, on some bright
day, he got an answer so circumstantially related
to his prayer as to be well nigh as convincing as
a New Testament miracle. From time to time
he was learning of like experiences by others.
He met with whole books made up of them — ex
periences so well attested that practically they
became his own. Also promises, Bible promises,
were quietly fulfilled to him. Promises to the
filial, to the liberal, to the believing, to the
tempted, to the afflicted; engagements and quasi-
engagements of this sort, which the Bible freely
makes, were continually being met and cancelled.
Thus, in the course of years, presumptions, prob
abilities, proofs, convictions were silently depos
ited in that Christian soul, as the dew in the still
night, as the coral island beneath the sea, as the
delta at the mouth of some majestic river. Start
ing thousands of miles away, sweeping down
through rich and crumbling banks, turbid at
length with the spoils and fatness of many a

144 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
land— what a magnificent accumulation it finally
unloads in the neighborhood of the sea ! Such
was the fund of experiences and convictions that
at last accumulated in the soul of Homo in favor
of special providence and a continual personal in
terference of God in human affairs in the interest
and name of Jesus Christ.
So experience has been again building on the
already templed structure. So the lake which
from so inconsiderable a beginning had grown to
be geographical, has seen the sweet flood creeping
up still higher on its green banks (is it the early
and the latter rains, or has some Cyrus, God-led,
diverted hither an arm of the Euphrates?) till
now great, deep-draughted barges go white- winged
everywhere upon it, and men can cast net and
bring it up " full of great fishes, a hundred and
fifty and three. ' '
ii. Experience of Holy Living.
For some years Homo has been having such
an experience. He has not been without his
sins; times of spiritual declension have come to
him; the tide has sometimes ebbed as well as
flowed; but on the whole the waters have been
gaining on the shore, as the sea is slowly gaining,
year by year, on our New England coast. Prayers,
Scriptures, Sabbaths, sanctuaries, trials, prosper
ities, Christian fellowships — in short, the means

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 145
of grace — have gradually done on him a sanctify
ing work. His sinfulness has abated. His right
eousness has grown. He is a sounder, healthier,
better character to-day than ever before — more
conscientious, principled, and thorough in his
piety; in short, we see " the path of the just that
shineth more and more. ' '
Now, really, this is the same thing as saying
that his faith has been growing. Sin is a won
derful obscurer of evidences and breeder of doubts.
To abate sin is to repair and ennoble the soul.
To abate sin is to do something toward removing
a cataract from the eyes. To abate sin is to pro
mote candor, to correct the judgment, to clear
away mists and smokes of many a name. Sin is
smokier than Birmingham. How can one get a
fair view of the sun among all these belching
chimneys ? Sin is really the source of all unbe
lief; and it is on this account that unbelief is
always treated in the Bible as criminal and pun
ishable. Could any skeptic be thoroughly emp
tied of sin, he would at once rise into faith as a
balloon springs aloft when all its weights are cast
out. And it is not hard to see how this may well
be. We might presume that wrong-doing would
incapacitate the soul; that a clogged, deranged,
and broken machine would do poor work; that
sooty fingers would blacken and blur every white
Tempted to Unbelief. I Q

1 46 ' TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
page of truth which they handle. The experience
of Christians is to this effect. They find that the
better they live the better do they believe. They
find that going toward sin is the same thing as
going away from God and his Word; that one
may go away so far that these great fadts dwarf
on the eye, and finally pass out of view.
Accordingly, Homo found a process of sancti
fication to be one of enlightenment. He grew
wiser because he grew better. His atmosphere
gradually cleared up. Shutters fell back and
windows were lifted. Cindery particles, one by
one, dropped from his eyes; and, finally, leaning
forth from the open casement, he could see, not
only the sun, but the blue and even the stars.
He felt fulfilled to him the promise, The pure in
heart shall see God; felt that, diverging farther
and farther from Satan, he had been getting far
ther and farther from one "who blinds the minds
of them who believe not, lest the light of the glo
rious Gospel should shine unto them."
This faith -producing experience has acted
chiefly in the way of removing obstacles. Streams
that naturally trended toward the lake had dropped
suddenly into pits, caverns, thirsty sand-wastes,
or, like the Jordan, into some Dead Sea, and dis
appeared; or, becoming dammed up by rocks and
ruins, had been turned aside to stranger destina-

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 147
tions. But these obstructions having gradually
been taken away, the waters have come to flow
freely on to their proper outlet; and now the wide
lake, alive with white wings of business and
pleasure, and whose waters have been creeping
up and up so long, at last quietly purls over into
yon lowland meadow, which straightway becomes
green as an emerald.
13. Experience of the Witnessing Spirit.
A man says, "I believe." You ask him,
"Why do you believe?" He answers, "I have
no reason which I can express in words: I only
know that somehow I believe." Is he unreasona
ble ? Not necessarily. Is not God able to create,
out of hand, faith in a soul that freely puts itself
in his hand? Cannot He who made the soul
make in it that state which we call faith, apart
from a logical foundation for it ? Or, if you do
not like this way of stating, cannot He reveal
himself and his religion directly to the inner vis
ion, without the intervention of certain premises
from which they can be inferred, so that they be
come axioms to us? To God all truths must be
axiomatic: to ourselves some truths are so already,
and, as our powers expand, the list will gradually
enlarge by the transfer to it of secondary and in
ferred truths; and how easy must it be to God to
hasten at any point this natural advance ! No

148 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
doubt he can do it. Indeed, that he has done it
seems a matter of conscious experience with some
Christians — with some, not with all. They seem
aware of a strange light within. They feel, as it
were, the guiding touch of a mysterious hand
along the highways of thought. Is it a real voice
that sounds within ? Not that exactly, but a sub
tile vibration through all the chambers of the soul,
as if from a voice saying, ' ' This is the way, this
the truth, this the life." It is the voice of the
Spirit, speaking always (note it well !) according
to the testimony of his written Word. ' ' Hereby
know we the Spirit of God. " "If they speak not
according to this word, it is because there is no
light in them. ' '
Now, this voice, this kingly voice, this voice
that rises easily above the voices of all other
witnesses, while chording with them, was heard
by Homo. Jesus promised that his disciples
should be dwelt in by the Holy Spirit; that He
should become to them a witness-bearer, testify
ing of Christ, taking of the things of Christ and
showing them. So, ever since he became a dis
ciple, this disciple has been having a Divine
Guest, with his silent yet eloquent witnessing to
God, his Son, and his Word; having him more
and more as time went on and his soul opened
room after room, with growing hospitality, to the

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 149
joy-giving inhabitant. And now, how brightly
shines the candle of the Lord within ! What an
unction of the Holy One is on his eyelids! How
his understanding opens heavenward as a bud
opens toward the sun when the new life within is
pressing into blossom! And he says with Job,
"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,
but now mine eye seeth thee. ' '
Ah, here is the supreme addition to faith.
Behold the key-stone of a glorious arch before
whose superb proportions all earthly architectures
are mean and deformed! Behold the coronation-
day of faith, when the king comes forth to the
people in robe and diadem and all royal state,
and the air quakes with trumpets, and a nation
shouts, "God save the king !"
Or, if you will recall a figure now old, but
truthful, the natural lake-basin, at first moist
with native springs and gradually receiving vari
ous contributions from sky and uplands till its
waters brim over into low-lying meadows, is now
receiving the greatest contribution of all. Yon
der cliff on its margin, Horeb-like, has been
smitten with the rod of God; and crystal floods,
enough for a host, are flowing, flowing, and sing
ing as they flow. Down pour the waters in
thunder and rainbows on the plain, delighting
the eye of the pilgrim, and carrying refreshment

150 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
and health and prosperity to villages and cities.
far away.
So Homo came to a grand faith, and as rea
sonable as grand, wholly in the way of experi
ence. He began with the promptings of a relig
iously constituted human nature. Then came
those of a careful Christian training. His expe
rience with life proceeded to inform him that
probability, and in certain cases even possibility,
is not only (the usual guide of men, but is enough
to bind the judgment and conscience even in
gravest matters; and that it is a very safe and
profitable thing for one to do, to assume and act
upon the truth of both Theism and Christianity.
So he set his face practically towards religion.
Then followed those two great experiences which
we call conviction and regeneration — two private
miracles in the interest of Christianity; the one a
miracle of revelation, and the other a miracle of
restoration, and enough in themselves to found
an empire — an empire of faith. From this point,
his mind opened, as a flower under spring suns, to
a feeling of the harmonies of nature with Revela
tion, and of both with that system one would
naturally expect from a Divine government. So
difficulties quietly disappeared. From this point
he experienced sanctification, itself a natural foe

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 151
of error, an opener of eyes, a dissipater of mists,
a restorer to the soul of that polarity by which
it originally pointed toward God and God's
truth. And from this point, too, he had a
growing experience of fulfilled prayer and Scrip
ture promises. But the crown of all his experi
ences was his experience of the Holy Ghost as a
self-luminous witness to the truth — a still, small
voice, or rather the soul of a voice, the innermost
essence of its meaning and power, a vibration of
the spirit instead of the air, penetrating and in
terpenetrating all other grosser witnessings, set
ting them aglow, and welding them together into
a bright and massive unity, as does the electric
arrow a sheaf of steel spear-heads found in its
path. And so Homo came to a mighty faith, by
which he triumphantly lived, and in which he
triumphantly died.
Could not anyone have a like faith by a like
experience ? With a single exception, that whole
system of experiences is open to the general pub
lic. All cannot have that careful Christian train
ing which Homo enjoyed; but without this, val
uable as it is, one may still go on from strength
to strength as a believer, till he appears in Zion
before God and sees what he has believed. His
case is that of an archer with many strings to his
bow; of a great capitalist who has so many

152 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
sources of income, that he can live, and even
splendidly accumulate, though one great source
is cut off. It is a great misfortune to be cut off
from a Christian nurture; but there are streams
of experience enough left to fill the lake-basin to
overflowing. Repentance itself is enough to found
a faith; and a course of conscientious living and
praying can enlarge it to almost any extent.
Try it, O man. You who say that it is the
sincere, nay, the dearest wish of your heart to
know the truth, try it, I say, or for ever after
hold your peace.

SAMPLE SCIENCE. IS3
X.
SAMPLE SCIENCE.
Speaking of those who object to Christianity,
the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson said, "It is
always easy to be on the negative side. If a man
were now to deny that there is salt on the table,
you could not reduce him to an absurdity. Come,
let us try this a little further. I deny that Canada
is taken, and I can support my denial by pretty
good arguments. The French are a much more
numerous people than we, and it is not likely
that they would allow us to take it. ' But the
ministry have assured us, in all the formality of
the Gazette, that it is taken. ' Very true. f But
the ministry have put us to an enormous expense
by the war in America, and it is their interest to
persuade us that we have got something for our
money. ' But the fact is confirmed by thousands
of men who were at the taking of it. ' Ay, but
these men have still more interest in deceiving us.
They don't want that you should think the French
have beat them, but that they have beat the
French. Now, suppose that you should go over
and find that it really is taken; that would only
Tempted to Unbelief. 20

154 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
satisfy yourself; for when you come home we will
not believe you. We will say you have been
bribed. Yet, sir, notwithstanding all these plau
sible objections, we have no doubt that Canada is
really ours. Such is the weight of common
testimony. How much stronger are the evi
dences of the Christian religion !' '
It being the easiest thing in the world to
make objections to anything whatever, one ought
not to be surprised to find that very many objec
tions have been made against both the Scriptures
and Theism.
A general answer to these may be given by
showing that whatever difficulties there may be
in the way of faith, there are still greater in the
way of unbelief; also, that most of the allegations
against the Scriptures are equally valid against
a personal Author of Nature, and that the sort of
reasoning that is good against Him is just as good
against received science, and indeed against the
commonest axioms of morals.
Two objections deserve special consideration,
because of their comprehensiveness, and of the
prominence which their friends have lately given
them. One of these is against Theism, and,
under the name of Evolution, teaches that matter
is eternal, and by means solely of its own forces
and laws has gradually wrought itself out into

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 155
the whole universe as known to us. This notion
seems to me fitly characterized by Montesquieu:
' ' Those who have said that a blind fatality has
produced all the effedts we see in the world, have
said a great absurdity ; for what greater absurdity
than a blind fatality which produces intelligent
beings?" But I do not propose to dwell upon the
Evolution hypothesis here, as I have discussed it
at length in the two volumes of Pater Mundi, aim
ing to show that, compared with the alternative
Theistic hypothesis for explaining nature, it is far
less sure, simple, sublime, salutary and safe, as
well as far less in accord with the natural thought
and traditions of mankind; and that therefore, in
obedience to received canons of philosophy, as
well as of common prudence, it ought to be
rejected; showing that while the sufficiency of
the Theistic hypothesis to explain nature is evi
dent at a glance to all minds, that of Evolution
can never he proved to the great mass of mankind on
account of the recondite and concatenated charac
ter of its arguments; so that if the public at large
accept it at all, it must be on a principle of faith
abhorrent to the whole skeptical scheme — save
that it would be faith in Darwin, Huxley, and
Tyndall instead of God— showing that it cannot be
proved even to scholars of the highest grade, for
the very good reason that such proof would contra-

156 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
didt a great variety of fadts both on the earth and in
the heavens, as expressed in well-known sciences.
That the doctrine of Evolution has not been proved
thus far, after a great deal of effort, is confessed
by the ablest of its friends. Its two pillars, Spon
taneous Generation and the Natural Transmuta-
tation of Species, still bear the name of hypotheses;
and by conscientious and carefuly examining
men everywhere the utmost that can be granted
is that it is a chain of guesses and analogies
strung with scientific fadts, valuable indeed in
themselves and serving to ornament the chain
and attradt attention to it, but having no es
sential connection with it, and adding nothing
whatever to its strength. Let the memorable
words of Agassiz be remembered: "I enter my
earnest, protest against the Transmutation theory.
The philosopher's stone is no more to be found in
the organic than the inorganic world; and we
shall seek as vainly to transform the lower animal
types into the higher ones by any of our theories
as did the alchemists of old to change the baser
metals into gold. ' '
The other objection is against the Scriptures;
and Claims that the drift of recent researches is to
show that the origin of man is much farther back
than the Scriptures will allow us to place it. As
this is one of the most pretentious of modern

SAMPLE SCIENCE. iS?
objections, has had exceeding stress laid on it by
unbelievers, and like its friend the Theory of
Development, assumes, to speak in the great
names of the ripest learning and science, let us
give it special consideration. Perhaps this will
show better than any other one thing how rash
and uncertain is much that is called science, and
how numerous the retreats it has been obliged to
sound in the course of its attacks on religion.
"Egypt has a tradition that gives her more
than, forty-eight thousand years of national life; and
a large part of this immense period is covered by
formal annals. China and India, to say nothing of
Chaldea, are hardly behind in the magnificence of
their claims. Must these claims go for nothing ?' '
They might as well. The Orientals are pro
verbial for large and showy statements. With a
very moderate capital of facts they will build you
an Aladdin's palace. It is rather wonderful than
otherwise that with so much real antiquity about
them the nations just cited put their age at so
moderate a figure. Forty-eight thousand years !
Forty-eight millions would hardly have surprised
one who knows the people. What more credible
than that some patriotic Manetho or Berosus,
wishing to flatter the national vanity, orientalized
his facts and made his countrymen a present of a
few thousand years that did not belong to them —

158 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
an outcome of the same feeling that leads the
child to appear as old as possible and the noble to
rejoice in a long pedigree! Accordingly, when
these "high and mighty" traditions are closely
examined they are found to contain so much that
is transparently fabulous as to utterly discredit
their testimony.
"But look at the present high physical and
mental grade of many men. We can hardly
imagine more perfedt human bodies than we often
see; and as to minds, certainly the display is
fully as splendid. How long would it take to
develop apes, or savages near akin to apes, into
such specimens of humanity? Looking back
some twenty-five centuries into Greece we find
among her athletes and heroes and maidens figures
not perceptibly less perfect; and among her poets,
statesmen, philosophers, orators, and historians
minds not perceptibly less capacious and dynami
cal than the best of our own times. At Mentone
in France has been found the skeleton of a man
belonging apparently to a much more remote
time, yet the frame and skull are as well devel
oped as in the most advanced of present races.
At this snail-rate of progress how far, far away
must be the first almost brutal men ! Certainly,
almost countless ages."
But who has given this man leave to assume

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 159
that we have apes, or even savages, for ancestors ?
Quite a considerable part of the best scholarship
of the world is not yet prepared to grant this, but
on the contrary firmly maintains, not only on the
ground of the Bible, but also on grounds of learned
research, that the orignal humanity, both bodily
and mental, was of a high order. So teach the
great traditions of the world — all pointing to a
primal golden age in which men were almost
demi-gods of beauty and strength as well as inno
cence. So teaches history as expressed in docu
ments and monuments. ' ' So far as history speaks
at all, ' ' says Prof. Rawlinson, than whom no liv
ing man is better entitled to speak on this subject,
"it is in favor of a primitive race of men, not
indeed equipped with all the arts and appliances
of our modern civilization, but substantially civil
ized, possessing language, thought, intelligence,
conscious of a Divine Being, quick to form the
conception of tools and to frame them as it needed
them, early developing many of the useful and
elegant arts, and only sinking by degrees and
under peculiar circumstances into the savage con
dition." But, even supposing the earliest men
to have been of the rudest in body and mind, who
has a right to say that it must have taken a hun
dred thousand years, or even ten thousand, to
ripen them into the present men ? Does it follow

160 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
that because a man has only grown a millionth
part of an inch in forty years that all the preced
ing growth of six feet was made at the same rate?
How many hundred years did it take to change
our wild English forefathers into ourselves; or
the cannibals of the Fiji Islands into 800 Chris
tian churches of very respectable Englishmen?
The fadt is that improvement in individuals, com
munities, and institutions often proceeds by great
leaps; and it is very suggestive that the little
child makes a greater relative gain during its
first few years than ever afterward.
1 ' But just look at the varieties of mankind;
and especially at the wide difference between the
Negro and the Caucasian. Your theory is that
these came from one stock. How long would it
take such large divergence to ripen under natural
conditions ? Send a white family to Africa, and
see whether in generations their noses perceptibly
flatten or lips perceptibly thicken. On Egpytian
monuments near 4,000 years back the negro is
pictured quite as we see him to-day. Surely
even at that far back time the races had already
been diverging for almost countless centuries !"
An answer to this lies in two facts. First : A
family sometimes changes vastly by a single leap,
parents finding their child vastly superior or infe
rior to themselves in point of both body and mind.

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 161
Second: There are instances of whole communities
gradually sinking in the course of a few centuries
from a high physical and mental standing to a
state in which they are almost caricatures of their
former selves. For example, take the Weddas of
of Ceylon. And Hugh Miller tells us of a com
munity of native Irish who two hundred years
ago were a fine type of men, but, being cast out of
their native seat and subjected to various unto
ward conditions, have now come to have crooked
and stunted forms, projecting mouths, retreating
foreheads — almost caricaturing human nature. In
view of such fadts it certainly is by no means
clear that a millennium or two of such circum
stances as most Africans have long been subject
to might not suffice to make all the difference
between them and ourselves — even if they are
not the descendants of a man who fell under a
Divine curse, whose potent alchemy changed gold
into iron instead of iron into gold.
' ' But have you considered the phenomena of
language ? We now have some hundreds of lan
guages so widely apart, both as spoken and writ
ten, as to be utterly unintelligible to each other.
A complete congress of them would offer as vio
lent contrasts as a complete congress of animals.
Set all the tongues to saying the Lord's Prayer
together, and it would be chaos instead of con-
Tempted to Unbelief. 2 1

1.62 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
cord. Babel itself would be confounded. And
this divergence among languages was as great ten
thousand years ago as it is to-day; for about so far
back date the Greek of Homer and the Sanscrit
Of the Vedas. How long would it take languages
springing from a common stock — as it is now gen
erally agreed among leading scholars that they
did — to part company so widely? How long
would it take the rude beginnings of speech to
graduate into such noble tongues as the ancient
Greek and Sanscrit, which almost sing and reason
of themselves — even supposing there were no set
backs in the current of progress? Certainly, al
most countless ages."
But, my friend, we must not allow you to for
get that a large part of scholars still hold that lan
guage did not grow up from the seed, was not
invented by man, and has not been left altogether
to natural laws in its development. The Bible
says that speech was supernaturally confounded.
On these views, man need not be so very old to
account for the noble ancient languages and the
wide difference between them. A hundred years
back of Homer and the Vedas would do as well as
a hundred thousand. Besides, the natural changes
in languages are often by no means slow. Com
pare modern Greek with the ancient. See what
the Latin has become in France, Spain, and Italy

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 163
within our own era. Nay, the English of our
own Spenser is almost a dead language to us; and
even so late a writer as Shakespeare needs a glos
sary to bring him fully within reach of his own
countrymen. The uniformitarian theory must
be largely discounted from in Philology as well as
Geology. Every now and then come great par
oxysms and freshets of change which do the work
of centuries in a few years. These must have
been far more frequent in early times; and lan
guages then were far less anchored by a copious
and widespread literature.
' ' But you should consider the high science and
art of very remote times — the astronomical lore of
Chaldea, China, India, Egypt, for which an anti
quity of many thousands of years before Christ
has been claimed by eminent scholars; and espe
cially the evidences of an extremely early civili
zation on the banks of the Nile. As far back as
we can descry the Greeks at all, we see them
facing reverently toward Egypt as the mother of
knowledge. Homer sang of 'hundred -gated
Thebes' about ten centuries before Christ; and
from that time down all the most eminent of his
countrymen sought wisdom and culture where
Moses is said to have found it — in the empire of
the Pharaohs. Among these was the historian
Herodotus. He tells us that five hundred years

1 64 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
before Christ he found in Egypt pyramids, tem
ples, cities, immense works of civil-engineering —
works that even now are the wonder of the
world — already hoary with immemorial antiquity.
Such things did not spring up, like a mushroom,
in a night. Pallas Athene may have leaped in
full stature and armor from the head of Jupiter;
but as to the Egyptian culture becoming a splen
did goddess all at once, or in anything less than
a long stretch of centuries, the thing is not to be
thought of by scholars. ' '
We must allow that a great battle has been
fought over such arguments. But the smoke has
cleared away somewhat; and we now find our
selves in possession of the following fact : " A con
sensus of savants and scholars almost unparalleled
limits the past history of civilized man to a date
removed from our own time by less than 4,400
years, excepting in a single instance. There re
mains one country, one civilization with respect
to which the learned are at variance; there being
writers of high repute who place the dawn of
Egyptian civilization about 2700 B. C, while
there are others who postulate for it an antiquity
exceeding this by above 2,400 years." This late
statement of Prof. Rawlinson gives us the extreme
figures in one direction. In the other, scholars of
the first mark date back the earliest Nile monu-

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 165
ments to even less than 1800 B. C. Between
these two points the whole ground is hotly con
tested; but the tendency of the strife has been
steadily toward the lower figures. Surrender after
surrender of the most positive and "scientific"
conclusions has been made, until it would not be
surprising if the date of the earliest Egyptian
monuments should be fixed considerably within
the twentieth century before Christ. Most of
them, as the palaces and temples of Karnac and
Luxor, are now allowed to have been made far
within that date. And but little, if at all, beyond
it — in the view of Champollion, Sir John Her-
schell, Sir J. G. Wilkinson, Prof. Rawlinson, and
other such scholars — stand the pyramids, confess
edly the oldest of the antiquities.
As to the additional years needed for the
growth of the population, power, and culture that
could produce the Egyptian monuments, it would
be hard to show that a thousand years would not
amply suffice. Only assume that the original
ancestor, instead of being next-door neighbor to
an ape, was such a man as Noah is said to have.
been, the heir of more than a thousand years of
experience and culture, and there is not the
slightest difficulty. The amazing fertility of
Egypt would draw to it the streams of population
like a mighty magnet, and the fresh, vigorous

1 66 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
stock would ' ' multiply exceedingly. ' ' Just think
what advances have been made in the United
States during the last two hundred years; in view
of them one is almost tempted to affirm that a
like period would be quite sufficient to fill the nar
row Nile- valley with people and monuments. A
thousand years is a very generous allowance. But
make it two thousand or even three. This last is
an extravagant concession; but let us make it,
and then say that whoever puts the origin of man
farther back than 5000 B. C. is enormously un
reasonable. "But after all, the main thing, because the
most scientific, is the evidence of extreme anti
quity furnished by the researches of geologists.
Bones and works of men have been found so deep
beneath the surface of the earth, or in such other
situations, as imply a very remote origin — almost
countless ages back. In the Deltas of the Nile
and the Mississippi articles of human origin have
been found at such depths that if we suppose the
deposition of mud to have been uniform at pres
ent rates, man must have existed for millions of
years. Some two hundred villages have been
found beneath the beds of the Swiss lakes, some
of them overlaid by thick beds of peat. Also, in
various parts of Europe have been found caves
occupied by the bones and implements of primi-

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 167
tive men, in connection with the remains of ex
tinct species of reindeer, bears, lions, elephants,
hippopotami, belonging to the close of the Glacial
Period, a period which some Geologists of note
think must have been almost inconceivably re
mote. ' '
How unreliable inferences from the depth of
river deposits above human remains are, may be
judged from a single example. A piece of Roman
pottery has been found ninety feet below the sur
face of the Nile Delta. A hundred things besides
gravity and depravity go hard to carry man and
his works downward; and mud of all kinds is an
easy thing to sink in. As to the pile settlements
of the Swiss lakes, some of them contain articles
of Roman times; and it is now conceded by lead
ing Geologists that even those under the thickest
peat may be not much older, since beds of peat
fifteen feet thick have been known to form within
historic times. As to the cave remains, the fol
lowing things may be said. First: In some cases
all the fadts may be explained by supposing that
men occupied caves that ages before had been
occupied by the brutes whose remains are found.
Second: In other cases the fadts are explainable by
supposing that the various contents of the caves
were brought together by streams flowing across
several different formations, and so collecting

168 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
things belonging to widely different eras. Third:
We do not yet know how far back to put the Gla
cial Period, or the extinct species of animals, or
the changes of level sometimes indicated by the
caves. The date of all these is still matter of vast
dispute ; and, for aught any can show to the con
trary, may well be considerably within 3000 B. C.
A shifting of the internal fires of the earth would
easily change the climate of Northern Europe
from that of Labrador in whose latitude it lies to
the present; and the operation of such a cause,
especially if gradual, need not be very far back to
be beyond the notice of history and tradition.
From this entire survey we gather that there
are no traces of man on the globe yet discovered
that reliably refer him to an earlier date than
some 4,000 or 5,000 years B. C. ; while even a
much more recent time seems not unlikely to
come to satisfy all known fadts. This, whether
one considers the traditions, or the present ad
vanced status of portions of mankind, or the wide
divergence of our races and languages from each
other, or the great remains of ancient art and
science, or the fossil footprints of primitive men.
From no point of the compass, and from no dip
of the needle, comes any evidence that can prop
erly be called scientific, or that is not flighty with
imagination, that requires us to consider our-

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 169
selves more than 6,000 or 7,000 years old. We
cannot allow those who claim more to assume
that man began as zero — not to say a minus quan
tity — and became his present integer by a long
series of infinitesimal accretions. It yet remains
to be proved that the childhood of the race was
not a splendid manhood: that we did not come
forth full grown and equipped like a goddess to
our great inheritance. It yet remains to be
proved that the law of gradualness which we all
recognize in nature is not yoked to another law
of volcanic paroxysm and outburst that can bury
in a day the Pompeii that has been steadily de
caying for centuries. The zephyrs that have for
so long been gently shaking fragrance from the
flowers suddenly appear as a tempest and lay a
forest low in a few moments. The ancient quiet
of Lisbon one day vanishes in the throes of an
earthquake; and the ancient discontent and mut
terings of the people, at last, on some 18th of
Brumaire, roar away in a Revolution that shakes,
not only France, but mankind.
Now comes a very important inquiry. How
does this agree with our Bible? We hold this
Book to be divinely inspired — an infallible and
complete rule of faith and practice. But there
are some things now connected with this Book
which no Christian scholar supposes to be given
Tempted to Unbelief. 22

170 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
by inspiration — for example, the binding the book
happens to have, the quality of the paper it is
printed on, the pictures it sometimes" contains,
the division into chapters and verses made for the
sake of convenience only a few centuries ago.
Among things of this uninspired sort some place
what are called the Biblical Chronologies. We
do not feel able to do as much. For, while there
is a certain indeterminateness in regard to time
in the earlier Bible history, it is plain that the
general tenor of its representations is totally in
consistent not only with the extremer views of
the antiquity of man which have been noticed,
but also with any that differ very materially from
those expressed in what are known as the Long
and Short Scripture Chronologies. On the mar
gin of some of our Bibles we find certain dates —
thus, building of the temple, 1012 B. C. ; the
Deluge, 2348 B. C. ; the Creation 4004 B. C. In
Bibles used in Russia is another set of dates —
larger than our own by about a thousand years —
for the principal events. These latter figures are
got at by a variety of computations, comparisons,
and arguments based on the Septuagint version
of the Old Testament — the others by a similar
process based on the Hebrew text as now held by
the Jews. Christian scholars are divided as to
which of these two chronologies is to be pre-

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 171
ferred; but of late years the weight of scholar
ship is setting very strongly in favor of the
Greek or long Chronology, for the following,
among other reasons : The Septuagint text is by
far the more ancient — that version having been
made in the third century before Christ, while
the text of our common Hebrew was settled cen
turies later. When first made, the joint work of
some seventy of the best scholars of the time, the
Septuagint was enthusiastically received among
the Jews as admirably representing its Hebrew
original, was the version used and quoted by
Jesus and his apostles, as well as by all the early
fathers and Christian centuries. This certainly
looks well. And if we accept it, and set down
the Flood as having occurred 3155 B. C, we have
an ample supply of time to meet the demands of
all modern discoveries. But we need not feel
compelled to take the Long Chronology. The
Short Chronology will satisfy all but conjectural
science — which is no science at all. All the ver
sions of Scripture agree in making the Deluge
not over 3155 B. C, and the Creation of man not
over 541 1 B. C. This general statement harmo
nizes finely with all that deserves to be called
science. This antiquity is not very great as compared
with that of the planet on wliich we live, or with

172 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
that of the brute kingdom. But it is enough to
satisfy a moderate ambition; and, what is of more
consequence^ enough to satisfy all known monu
ments and history, especially if we regard the
race as beginning in a high type. Suppose Adam
to have been such a type. He fell morally. For
about two thousand years man grew in experi
ence and the arts of life, as well as in wickedness.
Then came the Flood, and a new genesis of the
race, but one that left it heir to the knowledge
and skill of all the previous centuries. The stock
being still fresh and vigorous, and having abun
dant room and means of living, naturally ' ' mul
tiplied exceedingly," and pushed out in every
direction, searching out the most fertile distridts,
until in something less than a thousand years it
had founded cities and an empire on the fertile
banks of the Nile. Meanwhile, wisps and spurs
of the advancing nebula made their way to less
favored and remoter parts, and became the rude
frontier-men, such as hang on the outskirts of
our American progress westward, and, gradually
pressed farther and farther by the thickening
millions, at last appeared in Northern Europe as
the cave-dwellers and lake-villagers whose re
mains we find.
It is interesting to notice how difficult subjects
gradually clear up in the progress of exploration.

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 173
When the thoughts of men first rush at them they
are like a stream newly discovered by a herd of
wild and thirsty animals, and into which they
have rushed pell-mell — so tossed and turbid that
the eye cannot pass beneath the surface. Gradu
ally, however, the mud settles, and at last' the
stream becomes so clear that the eye reads easily
all its depths. What crude and extravagant no
tions were conceived of America when men began
to talk about the new continent, almost as wild
as the Arabian Nights; as to the extent, shape,
resources, population, of the great twilight realm !
But as voyage succeeded to voyage, settlement to
settlement, and book to book, the accounts grad
ually became more moderate and reasonable, and
the wondrous El Dorados and Fountains of Per
petual Youth that made such a figure in the six
teenth century at last sobered down into the
rational geography and statistics of the nine
teenth. Newly opened eyes are apt to see men
as trees walking. Objects are apt to be magni
fied and distorted when seen through fogs and
twilights. So it has happened in our archaic
field. At first it seemed gigantic and plethoric
with antiquity. Its shadows stretched from hori
zon to horizon. The astronomic periods almost
seemed reproduced in human society. But as
explorer after explorer threaded the wilds of the

174

TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.

new land, and fogs and twilight by degrees gave
way to sunlight, the dragons and other magical
creatures faded from view; and now we are com
ing to quite sober and lifelike views. The yeast-
ing stage of the glass of soda is almost passed,
and we begin to get glimpses of the bottom.
But it is still more interesting to notice how
such matters are apt to clear up in favor of the
Bible. On the discovery of the Chinese Astron
omy a great thunder of outcry in the name of
science was made by unbelievers, that its date
was enormously inconsistent with any possible
Biblical chronology: but after a while the greater
discovery was made that the Chinese science was
not Chinese at all, but Jesuitical; and now no
authorities carry back the germ of the nation far
ther than 1 200 B. C. A somewhat similar history
belongs to the astronomy of India. In the latter
part of the last century it was fashionable in the
scientific world, led by M. Bailly in France and
Prof. Playfair in England, to credit India with
native astronomical tables dating back more than
3000 B. C. ; and Chaldea with an astronomy
equally ripe and hardly less old. The views were
very positive. Indeed they professed to be dem
onstrated. But, La Place leading the way, it is
at last possible to say that these views are twice
dead and plucked up by the roots, and that "the

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 175
best Aryan scholars place the dawn of Iranic civ
ilization about 1500 B. C, of Indie about 1200
B. C." (See Rawlinson' s Origin of Nations.) The
Zodiacs of Denderah and Esneh, when first exam
ined, were pronounced some 17,000 years old; and
unbelief almost shook the heavens with its tri
umphant cheers; but after a while Champollion
deciphered on one monument an inscription re
ferring it to the time of Augustus Caesar, and on
the other one referring it to the time of the Anto-
nines. Now no scholar supposes that either of
the six representations of the Zodiac found in
Egypt dates beyond 200 B. C.
Nearly all the secular sources of information
on the antiquity of man have a similar history.
Whether it is language or race or monuments or
fossil remains, its first aspect frowned porten
tously on the Bible; and the enemy shouted and
waved banners and pointed gleefully at the low
ering face, and exclaimed, " Behold the Conflict
with Science !" But soon the frown began to
relax, and, in cases not a few, has become a smile
bright as a summer morning. This has been re
peated so often that the friends of the Bible feel
warranted, solely on the ground of experience, in
expecting that, however unfavorable first appear
ances may be, they will sooner or later clear up in
favor of the Book— just as we confidently expect

176 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.,
that cloudy weather will in time clear up and
show us a. blue sky and undimmed sun. When
conjecture and suspicion and half-truth get through
their seething and chaotic state and crystallize
into real science, then it becomes a glass to aid us
in seeing things as the Bible sees them — perhaps
a telescope, perhaps a microscope, perhaps a prism
gorgeous with spectral analysis.
Such mutations are in accord with what has
been the history of science from the beginning.
The entire way back to the earliest known culti
vators of knowledge is strewn with exploded the
ories which in their day bore the proud names of
wisdom, philosophy, and science. As says Hum
boldt in his Cosmos, ' ' All works treating of em
pirical knowledge and of the connection of natu
ral phenomena and physical laws are subject to
the most marked modifications in the lapse of
short periods of time; and those scientific works
which have, to use a common expression, become
antiquated by the acquisition of new funds of
knowledge, are thus continually being consigned
to oblivion as unreadable. ' '
The Geography taught by the seven wise men
of Greece and their Egyptian teachers, as well as
through all the palmier period of Athens and
Rome, without question, has been dead and bur
ied many a century.

SAMPLE SCIENCE. V/7
Most of the early Greek representatives of
Science, including Socrates, held that the laws of
the external world were no proper objects of re
search; men should rather give themselves to the
study of metaphysics. The present time sees
Natural Science become a colossus overshadowing
everything, and indeed quite generally held to be
about the only thing that deserves to be called
science. For many ages, from Plato downward, the pre
vailing, not to say the only, doctrine among the
learned was that the true way of investigation is
not to observe particular fadts and by an induc
tion of them ascend to general principles, but to
first find the general principles in the depths of
reason, and then deduce from them particular
fadts. Until the time of Lord Bacon this was
generally considered the scientific method, and as
good as demonstrated. To hold any other view
was contempt of court, and punished accordingly.
But now the tables are completely turned. The
Inductive Method is on the throne. Experiment
and observation are everywhere triumphant, and
the old ' ' science ' ' is relegated to attics and curi
osity shops and the smoky dens of sundry German
metaphysicians. Immemorially, and until quite recent times,
all classes held Astrology to be a true science —
Tempted to Unbelief. 2"}

178 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
among these such men as Roger Bacon, Tycho
Brahe, and the great father of the Inductive Phi
losophy himself. So unanimous and authorita
tive was the deliverance of scholars on the sub
ject, that for ages skeptics scarcely "muttered or
peeped" dissent. But to-day Astrology is the
property of fools and prestidigitators.
For ages also scientists upheld Alchemy as
being not only an art but also a science. Rea
soning from assumed general principles, after the
Deductive Method then in vogue, they not only
proved the possibility of changing base metals
into the precious, and of compounding a universal
Solvent and Remedy, but also laid down in a
system the principles on which such splendid re
sults might be reached; and these principles were
confidently reckoned so much science. Learning
was about as positive and unchallenged in favor
of Alchemy as it was in favor of its twin-sister
Astrology. Who believes in Alchemy to-day —
even though Panaceas and El Dorados and Phi
losopher's Stones without number are advertised
in every newspaper and hawked with brazen lung
and cheek on all the country side?
That the earth is the centre of the celestial
motions and of a complex system of spheres car
rying around it all the other heavenly bodies was
very good science for a time, and that a very long

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 179
one — some fourteen centuries. During this great
period astronomers were of one mind. Ptolemy
had settled "the order of the heavens," and it
was taught in all the schools as unquestion
able science, and that of the sublimest sort.
Now the Ptolemaic System has not a single de
fender. It is a curiosity — nothing more, scarcely
that. In Meteorology, from the days of Aristotle
down to those of Torricelli and Pascal, the scien
tific world taught that "Nature abhors a vac
uum;" and this was generally accepted as a sci
entific explanation of the rise of water in a pump.
For a hundred years Chemists, including such
men as Priestly and Boerhaave, were agreed on
phlogiston as the principle of combustion; also for
a long time, and in the name of Lavoisier and all
Europe, taught that oxygen was the only acidify
ing principle. The Corpuscular Theory of light,
rooting itself in the glory of Newton, was fashion
able science until within the memory of men now
living, but is now almost completely supplanted
by the Undulatory Theory: while light, heat,
electricity, magnetism, and even gravity, which
used to be reckoned distinct principles, are now
widely reckoned only different and mutually con
vertible forms of the same thing, viz., motion.
From the beginning of Geology down — through

180 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
Vulcans and Neptunes, cataclysms and uniformi-
tarianisms, astronomic abysms of time and Mane
tho' s contemporaneous dynasties reproduced in
stone — down to the present time, some fifty chap
ters of good rousing science, fit for text-books and
colleges, have had to be rewritten; and even these
we must not take as a finality, if we are to credit
the President of the British Association of Sci
ence, who, taking his stand perhaps on the deep-
sea dredgings of the Challenger and Spencer's
"Illogical Geology" and Darwin's "Incomplete
ness of the Geologic Record," officially informs
us that it is the prevailing feeling among Geolo
gists that ' ' the whole foundation of Theoretic
Geology must be reconstructed. ' ' This, however,
is not quite so startling and discouraging as the
assertion of Haeckel that all of the sciences "rest'
on unverified hypotheses. ' '
For further examples of what an eminent pro
fessor of Chemistry calls the "shifting phases of
science," see such books as.Whewell's History of
the Inductive Sciences. And to the formidable
array add, if you please, the successive waves of
Metaphysical Science that have so swiftly chased
and obliterated each other on the sands of Ger
many, that one lifts his eyebrows and shrugs his
shoulders at the very names of Fichte, ¦ ScheUing,
Hegel, Semler, Strauss, etc.

SAMPLE SCIENCE. 181
And what is the lesson ? That there is noth
ing reliable in science ? By no means — but that
even scholars are so free and easy and precipitate
in applying that venerable name that Religion
has no need to be alarmed and to hurry up its
reconciliations and accommodations when assured
that Science is deciding against her. It seems
that before now Science has made a good many
erroneous decisions. And should it ever become
hardy enough to decide, as with one voice, that
Moses and Christ are unscientific, and even that
eternal Matter is the sole mother of everything,
from a weed to a world, from a mote to a man,
we who know history have good reason to believe
that even this decision will all be taken back
again in course of time in favor of that older sci
ence which says, ' ' In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth. ' '
When will men have done with the profanity
of calling their venturesome speculations and
hasty guesses and unverified hypotheses by the
name of science ? Let them keep to the name
that belongs to them. This is Border Land.
Every true science is like a nebulous star — with
a bright central nucleus that shades away into a
border-land where darkness and light contend for
the mastery. The bright nucleus of assured truth
is always growing; but the vague and shadowy

1 82 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
outskirts always remain : and we are not allowed
even to hope for the time when our star will
cease to be nebulous. Astronomers, chemists,
and all other scientists will ever find a misty re
gion girding them on all sides, into which the
sight passes but doubtfully. While they are try
ing with aching eyes to make something out of
the shadows and ghosts of shadows that play
hide-and-seek in the distance, let them not so
far forget themselves as to call those phantoms
science. Though we are never to see a perfected sci
ence, we do see sciences going on toward perfec
tion. And experience assures us that as fast as
they advance they will advance in accord with
the Bible. In their crude state they are like the
spokes of a broken wheel, which the wheelwright
is setting himself to repair. Many of the spokes
are broken off at different lengths, and somewhat
strained out of their proper direction; yet there is
a general convergence on the hub. But should
the repairs proceed, and radius after radius be
eked out to its proper length and put in position
till all is done — then we should have the sciences,
really such, not only generally pointing at, but
visibly united in, the Bible. This is what we are
surely moving toward. Meanwhile, some of us
are getting a little impatient. We wish the sci-

SAMPLE SCIENCE. ,83
ences would hurry up their repairs. We want to
see more of the bright but broken and displaced
rays that are streaming from all quarters toward
our sun visibly completed through their whole
length, and united in that great Luminary —
God's written Revelation.

184 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
XI.
GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY?
Time was, and that not very far back, when
the current feeling among Christians was that
there is no such thing as an honest atheism or
even infidelity. It is not only hollow, but the
hollowness is so complete as to leave nothing but
a mere skin of profession. But latterly this view
has sensibly retreated. Not only is the genuine
ness of the grosser forms of unbelief generally al
lowed, but a disposition is widely shown to speak
of them, and especially of the more eminent and
scholarly unbelievers, in so mild and apologetic a
tone as to push on us the inquiry, "Is it indeed
little or nothing of an offence for men in these
times and lands to be without a Christ and even
without a God ?"
Look at them. They are scientists — metaphy
sicians, chemists, geologists, astronomers, bota
nists, biologists. Some of them, confessedly,
have large natural powers, and large experience
and repute as investigators or teachers within
their respective fields. They are well supplied
with libraries and all outward appliances of in-

GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY 1 185
vestigation, and are seen daily going through the
common forms and motions of trained minds and
of a faithful use of the best modern methods of
inquiry. In addition, they live in the very cen
tre of Christian faith and information, and indeed
have from childhood been in daily contact with
Christian facts, principles, -and arguments. And
yet they are materialists, deists, and even athe
ists — failing to reach the most elementary points
of religious knowledge. They know neither rev
elation nor God; and freely declare themselves to
that effect in lectures and journals and books.
Some of these unbelievers are professional stu
dents of moral and religious subjects, industri
ously working all the formalities and technicali
ties of learning, and devoting their whole time to
what they call study of the theory and literature
of religion ; and yet they are found in the last and
darkest depths of godless speculation.
What do Christians say of these men ? Some
times very mild things: "We are sorry for the
result to which this author has come; but there
can be but one opinion as to his candor, and the
scientific singleness of mind and hearty love of
truth displayed in the volume." So the critical
journals pronounce, and in the spirit of such a
verdict they go on to bespeak for these unbeliev
ers, as lecturers and authors, a large public atten-
Tempted to Unbelief. 2A

i86 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
tion and welcome. By their mild words and
liberal encomiums they erect, so to speak, lofty
platforms for them, from which they may com
mand the sight and ears of men. And it is just
possible that when these fair-minded and very
distinguished gentlemen have come to occupy the
real platforms so kindly, though indirectly, pro
vided for them by their Christian admirers, these
admirers take the platform with them, nobly in
troduce them, and afterward compliment them
with breakfasts and receptions. When called to
account for this, they justify themselves partly on
the ground of the literary and scientific eminence
of their protege.., and partly on the ground of
their attitude as sincere and fearless inquirers after
truth — men who have painfully done their best in
the search, and yet without success, and so are
agnostics as to the Bible and God, and even the
reality of moral distinctions ! Of course, then,
we must call them unfortunates, victims of cir
cumstances or constitution, men to be pitied ra
ther than blamed.
I do not feel permitted to take this view of the
case, charitable and amiable as it seems. The
chief trouble is that it is quite too amiable for the
Bible. According to this Book no one can miss
the fundamental verities of religion without su
preme guilt. Men are commanded to believe

GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY? 187
them under the severest penalties. The penalties
could not be greater. In which of the Testa
ments do we find that a man may be without God
and yet be blameless? When the Israelites fell
away from Jehovah into idolatry, were they ever
treated simply as objects of pity ? The Lord re
buked them and scourged them as if they had
committed an enormity. Where is the prophet
or apostle that speaks of an unbeliever in God or
Christ in the vein in which some Christian re
views have spoken of Mill ? Even the heathen
are held to be without excuse for not knowing the
Creator of heaven and earth. It is the "fool"
that says in his heart, ' ' There is no God. ' ' We
are told again and again that a true seeking after
God is sure to find him. ' ' If any man will do
His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether
it be of God, or whether I speak of myself;" a
conscientious liver and doer according to his light
is sure to become a disciple of Christ. This is
the way the Bible speaks. Not one of these men
without faith in God and his Son has yet seen
the time when he could not reasonably be sum
moned to repent and believe the Gospel imme
diately. The repentance itself would bring him
faith. He never would have come into this faith
less state if he had treated himself and the truth
fairly; and he now continues in it, not by any

1 88 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
invincible necessity — unless indeed he has been
judicially given over to a reprobate mind to be
lieve a lie — but from some gross moral remissness
for which he may righteously be held to severe
account. Beyond all question this is the Bible
way of viewing things.
And it is also the way of a reasonable Deism.
Whether there is a God from whom we came and
to whom we owe reverence, love, worship, ser
vice — is it possible that a man honestly and pa
tiently struggling for light is left helplessly in the
dark about such a matter as this ? Whether we
have a written revelation from heaven on the
basis of which only we can be sanctified and
saved — is it possible that God leaves any honest
soul to do its painful best over such a matter as
this and yet do it in vain ? I must say, No. I
cannot reconcile it with my sense of what would
be kind or just or wise in the Supreme Being.
So whenever I see an atheist or an infidel, what
ever show of candor and fair research he may
make, I say to myself, Something is wrong about
the interior of this man; the fair appearance is
deceptive; if his whole history were laid open to
view, as by the scalpel of yon illustrious anato
mist, it would be found that he has sadly and
criminally mismanaged himself in his relations to
the truth; and if he ever becomes a believer he

GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY? 189
will see and confess as much, as hundreds before
him have done, and as recovered unbelievers are
very apt to do.
How well I remember such a confession once
made to myself. A young man of uncommon
brightness of mind, in connection with unbe
lieving company and reading, lapsed through infi
delity into atheism. I sought to recover him in
many a conversation. He expressed the utmost
confidence in his position. He had all the air of
a most profound and ingenuous unbelief; had
sought to know the truth, had desired it above all
things, had thought and read to the best of his
faculty and opportunity, and, as the result, felt
compelled to withhold faith from Jesus and from
God. A great trouble came on him. He was
set face to face with death. Still no change in
his bearing. The end drew nigh. The same
confident composure of a mind that has done its
best to know, and has failed. I almost despaired
of him. But one day I found a great change. I
could see it in his face before I heard it in his
words. The whole structure of his unbelief had
suddenly fallen to pieces, as if a house of cards,
at the first stroke of a genuine repentance. And
then he confessed to me how hollow had been his
confidence, his so-called investigations, and even
his seeming unbounded ingenuousness. He had

igo TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
overstated himself, his seeking did not deserve the
name, he felt culpable in view of the whole pro
cess by which he became and so long remained an
unbeliever. Such a confession almost always follows such
a recovery. And were there no other light on
the case of yon unbelievers — who seem to have
exhausted all the attitudes and motions of a fair
religious inquiry, and all to no purpose — than is
shown by such examples, I should feel sure that
they are very like some collegian we have known,
and of whom we know that he has bent over the
college books for four years, appeared regularly at
recitations and examinations, and is now through
with his curriculum, but without anything that
deserves to be called an education. Is he an in
capable? By no means, not even a dullard.
Well then, I know that he must have been culpa
bly wanting to himself; knew it before taking
counsel of his instructors, and learning of them
how sluggishly and carelessly and superficially he
has dealt with his studies.
Well, if there is blameworthiness of a very
grave sort about all these unbelieving men, in
what does it lie ? My view is this. In common
with all other natural men they secretly disrel
ished essential religion itself; they neglected to
carefully practise the truth as far as known; they

GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY? i9i
opened their ears freely to unbelieving specula
tions without really investigating any ; even their
seeming investigation of Theism and Scripture
was only a seeming. Names and forms of inquiry
they had in abundance, but really they were only
names and forms. They never went on the tracks
of truth as the hunter does on the tracks of his
game. They have never sought for religious wis
dom as for silver, and dug for it as for hid treas
ures. Their learned names, their logical formu
las, their scientific and philosophical moulds of
thought never included a real, hearty seeking
after truth. One is reminded of a suit of armor,
each part fastened to its proper place: at a dis
tance one might think he saw a knight ready for
battle; but, on coming up, a single rap shows that
there is no man within, much less the renowned
Cid. Their investigation was a mere simula
crum. It did not deserve the name, though no
doubt it plentifully got it, especially from the
men themselves. I would not care to say that
they never had any jets of honest effort after the
truth: few indeed but have some intermittent im
pulses in right directions. But, as to anything
like patient continuance in well-doing, they never
had it. Not a month, not a week, very likely
not a day or even hour had they conscientiously
devoted to solid, prayerful inquiry. The whole

192 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
matter was slurred over. They read, heard, talked,
and, to some extent and after a sort, inquired
around the subject; they received impulses, floated
on currents, perhaps drifted so as to touch the
circumference of the Evidences, at some points —
tangents, not secants— but they never persever-
ingly laid themselves out to make and enter the
mouth of that harbor.
So their minds had no anchorage. They were
just in the position to be blown hither and thither
by every wind of doctrine. And they allowed
themselves to be blown upon freely from all points
of the compass. Perhaps they invited all the
winds. Led by that secret repugnance to religion
of which I have spoken, they set their ears wide
open to everything objectors had to say. They
set their eyes wide open to all that cavillers and
adversaries chose to print. Under the plea that
it was but fair to hear both sides, and the assump
tion that such vague and casual dealings with the
side of faith as no one can well fail of in a Chris
tian land are enough for it, they made themselves
thoroughfares for all sorts of unbelieving notions
and speculations. That easiest thing in the world
for anybody to do, the raising of objections on
whatever subject, they took in the whole unbe
lieving world to assist them in doing. They heard
everything, and really examined nothing. They

GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY? i93
were always hearing what the enemy had to say,
with a natural bias in his favor.
The consequence could have been foreseen
from across the world. The smallest acquaint
ance with human nature could have predicted an
unsettled mind, a mind full of suspicions and jeal
ousies of the truth, full of difficulties, doubts, an
tagonisms; and at last full of bitter and aggressive
infidelities and atheisms. In fadt, it is a case of
much bad company. Is a man known by the
company he keeps? Does one insensibly take
character from his habitual surroundings, unless
he is contending against them? These men are
not contending against the unbelieving notions
with which they have peopled themselves, but
the reverse. What else could be expected than
that they should gradually become like their
favorite companions? Do we wonder if a man
becomes modified by the food he eats, the air he
breathes, the dress he daily puts himself in, the
class of people he confines himself to ? Bad sur
roundings will unsettle good health, good man
ners, good grammar, and even good morals;
especially in the earlier part of life and when
these things have but little root: why not good
opinions as well ?
So, for one, I am not surprised that these men
are unbelievers. I should be surprised if they
Tempted If, rtiWlief. 25

194 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
were not. If a man opens all the gates of his field
into a hunting park, he may be sure that the
foxes, wild boars, and other destructive animals
which belong in the park, to say nothing of
trampling hounds and hunters, will lay his field
waste and make a harvest impossible !
Beyond all question, the chief foe to Christian
ity in our time is intellectual unbelief. And the
Christian minister, as he goes forth to his work,
has great occasion to bear well in mind the sources
of this unbelief, and its gravely criminal charac
ter — even when called scientific — and govern him
self accordingly in the assaults he is to make and
sustain.

PARLEY THE PORTER. I9S

XII.
PARLEY THE PORTER.
Caution is needed in using all our senses.
Can one carelessly taste anything that offers itself?
He would die of poison. Can one carelessly feel
or smell everything that offers itself? He would
grasp a nettle or an asp; would fill his nostrils
with :disgust and disease. So of the senses oi
sight and hearing. Unless we take heed what we
hear and see, we shall soon cease to hear and see
at all. The thunder will deafen and the light
ning will blind us.
On this point there is no disagreement among
sensible men. And, if the men are good as well
as sensible, they are especially wont to recognize
the need of caution in using the two great senses
of sight aHd hearing. To a man, they dislike to
see their children listening with free ear to the
oaths and ribaldry of some low fellow to whom
nothing is sacred. To a man, they refuse to have
their children look in upon many scenes of gross
vice. It would distress them to discover that the
pride and hope of their homes are either hearing
or reading daily lessons of falsehood, dishonesty,

196 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
disobedience — lending patient attention to shrewd
encomiums on such things as selfishness, revenge,
sensuality, and obscenity. The child who should
stop his ears and run from those who are trying to
teach him the manliness of idleness, insubordi
nation, drunkenness, and murder would receive
the instant approbation of all in the community
whose approbation is worth having. Only the
vilest or the silliest would claim that the fugitive
ought to remain and hear both sides, that he is
unfair, that he cannot know that the things rec
ommended are bad till he has heard all that may
be said in defence of them. And every respecta
ble person knows of something against which he
is disposed to shut his own eyes and ears as closely
as he would those of his child. If fiends disguised
as men set to advocating to his face a wholesale
casting off of the restraints of ordinary morality
and decency, and unbounded license of villainy
and debauchery, he instinctively refuses to listen
to such abominable communications. In vain do
they insist loudly on "impartiality," and the in
justice of being condemned without a full hear
ing; a voice in his heart tells him that such things
are simply intolerable, and to be fled from as men
are wont to flee from the neighborhood of reeking
cesspools. Who says all this better than the great

PARLEY THE PORTER. ig7
Dreamer? Mansoul is surrounded by enemies.
All its five gates are assailed by day and by night;
but especially Ear-Gate and Eye-Gate. See how
around these sweep and roar the great tides of
stratagem and battle; how warrior doctrines and
practices — now disguised with the king's uniform
and white banners of friendship, and now openly
charging with defiant trumpets and thrusting
spears — seek entrance ! The garrison must be on
the alert. They must have eyes sharp as needles
for all sorts of deceptions. They must spy out
from observatories, swarm on battlements, shoot
from the lancet windows of flanking towers, and
look well to bolt and bar. Else the smoke of
Mansoul goes up to heaven.
Bunyan was right — right as the Ten Com
mandments, and the law of self-preservation, and
the famous prayer that says, ' ' Lead us not into
temptation. ' ' People must take heed what they
hear and read. We cannot attend to everything,
if we wish. Some things spoken and written are
too trifling to deserve notice from persons whose
day is so brief as ours. Shallyou and I, who
were born yesterday and will die to-morrow,
spend our time in chasing inconsequential atoms?
Let them go, while we look at the great-orbed
worlds that come wheeling so grandly near us
and demanding our attention with the voices of

198 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
kings. But then all great things are neither true,
nor good, nor useful. Even as there are monsters
among the animals, and Gehennas of fire among
the worlds, so among the written and spoken doc
trines that go abroad, many are monsters of false
hood and destrudtiveness. We can no more go
among them without care than we could among
dissolved menageries. For a purpose we do some
times adventure ourselves among wild beasts, but
we do it with great precautions, and perhaps after
having cased ourselves in steel. For a purpose
we do sometimes adventure ourselves into a mala
rious atmosphere, but we do it with all possible
safeguards — perhaps with a medicated sponge over
the mouth. And, doubtless, for a purpose, and
with due care, some may and should go in freely
among gross opinions and practices. Somebody
must thoroughly know, expose, and fight such
things. Let the champions fulfil their destiny.
But as to most people, they have no vocation for
this sort of work, and the less they have to do
with it the better. Such is the teaching of expe
rience ; of philosophy, as well. Much less do these
warrant people at large in a vague and purpose
less hearing or reading of all sorts of dodtrines and
notions. The youth accustomed to roam about
and listen without restraint to everything, good,
bad, and indifferent, which men may choose to

PARLEY THE PORTER. i99
say to him, seldom fails of being ruined. The
adult who suffers himself to be persuaded to keep
his ear carelessly open to vile or false teachings,
commonly ends with accepting them, or at least
with not rejecting them. Making it his practice
to hear everything, he is found at last without a
fixed belief in anything. It is an old story — old
as the first mother of Scripture. A too-open ear
slew her. She would listen to what the serpent
had to say against God. She would entertain the
arguments which the fiend with subtle voice mar
shalled against the justice and truth of her Maker.
And so the Fall ! So armies of disasters trooping
in on the world through that ancient unkept Ear-
Gate. I have mainly in my thought the way in which
many treat infidel and atheistic speculations, and
even such as directly assail the last foundations of
right and wrong. Do they not freely, though
without anything that deserves to be called inves
tigation, read unbelieving books and journals, and
perhaps allow their children to do the same ? Do
they not go to hear unbelieving lecturers ? and at
street corners, stores, blacksmith shops, and what
ever modern substitute for the ancient agora, allow
themselves to be swept in upon by all the winds
of cavil and objection ? People who incautiously
sit in draughts must be expected to take colds, not

200 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
to say deaths, no matter how vigorous their health
and sound their constitutions, and much matter if
they are invalids; such carelessness will be the
death of weaklings. And when I find certain old
sayings well expressing these lessons of experi
ence, I am not going to think any the worse of
them because they happen to be some thousands
of years old and to be found in the Bible. "Evil
communications corrupt good manners. " " Cease,
my son, to hear the instrudtion that causeth to
err from the words of knowledge. " " Take heed
what ye hear. " "A companion of fools shall be
destroyed;" and I do not imagine it to make much
difference whether the ' ' fools " be of the specula
tive sort or the practical. Living in bad air will
damage any constitution. Hearing and reading
everything without thoroughly examining any
thing, must, from the very nature of the human
mind, confuse and unsettle it. A common thor
oughfare must be expected to be dusty and dim.
A constant trampling and outcry along it of dis
orderly herds of cattle cannot but go to drown
nobler voices. It is awfully inconsistent for a
man to pray, "Lead us not into temptation," and
then set Ear-Gate and Eye-Gate wide, open to all
assailants. Shall the farmer have neither fences
nor police? Then he soon will have nothing
else; no corn, no wine, no oil — no living.

PARLEY THE PORTER. 201
Does one say, "You cannot properly reject a
doctrine till you have personally heard what its
friends have to say in its favor ' ' ?
I might deny this. I may see clearly that
entertaining the pleas of unbelief will have an
unfavorable effect on my charadter; may see it
more or less from experience of my own, as well
as from observation of the experience of others.
Also, I may see a surer, easier, and altogether
safer way of testing unbelief than that of listening
indefinitely to such men as Paine and Voltaire,
viz. , the experimental way suggested in the Scrip
tures, something like which seems indispensable
to the great bulk of mankind with their narrow
intellectual opportunities. Or, I may see clearly
that if a hearing must be given, it had better be
given by some other persons more competent than
myself, and on the whole more favorably circum
stanced for judging correctly; as when a Legisla
ture appoints a committee of its ablest to consider
and report upon a proposed bill.
But, granting that it is necessary for me to give
a personal hearing to what unbelief has to say for
itself, does it follow that this hearing must be pro
longed indefinitely? Must the time never come
when I shall be warranted in shutting my door on
the assailants of religion, and saying, "I have
had enough of this. You must not ask me for
Tempted to Unbelief. 26

202 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
any further entertainment of your notions. I can
not afford to keep open house any longer — espe
cially without precautions, as I have been doing..
For, my vague and careless reading and hearing,
without anything of the earnest probing of an
investigator, has been nothing more than a per
mission of free entry into my mind at all hours of
the day and night to whatever vagabond specula
tions may be abroad. What valuable house could
long stand such a liberal treatment of tramps !
It would be stripped of everything valuable. Not
unlikely the very building itself would disappear
in flame and smoke, as did the barn whose latch-
string I left out for the accommodation of all
chance wayfarers. What better fate has the house
within me to look for if I leave its latchstring out
in a region that abounds with rogues and incen
diaries in the form of opinions and specula
tions?" Men can be found to recommend lying and
stealing, and even worse things. And some of
these strange people are very ingenious. They
are capital jugglers in thought and speech, such
first-rate painters of ugliness that it seems beauty
itself to a careless observer. And they say, ' ' Be
fair. Give our side a full hearing. And, as you
can never know before examination but that our
latest is our best and quite conclusive, continue

PARLEY THE PORTER, 203
*
to hear as long as you live." What say we to
such an appeal? Do we straightway admit its
justice? Never. We are not so simple. We
know it would be the ruin of our families, if not
of ourselves, to open ears indefinitely to subtle
pleas for dishonesty and sensuality. If ever we
really come to doubt whether such things are the
abominations they are said to be, and nothing will
satisfy our sense of even-handed justice but a per
sonal hearing of what can be said in their favor,
we will give a sufficient hearing under all possi
ble precautions, and then have done. This is our
utmost. No principle of justice known to men
requires us to treat a suspected enemy as if he
were a proved friend; and to keep on doing it for
a thousand years, or even for threescore and ten.
The law of self-preservation deserves some respect.
He who in this latitude keeps his door open from
January to January, through the whole round
year, will be likely to have tempests for guests.
•"Guests," do I say? The right to enter at all
hours and for a lifetime does not differ sensibly
from ownership.
A pedler approaches your gate. As you look
at him through the blind, you see that his appear
ance is far from prepossessing. Is not this the
man of whom you have been hearing so much of
late — so much ill? The air is full of rumors to

204 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
the effect that his wares are worthless, even infec
tious; and some people of great consideration go
so far as to say that the infection is a pestilence.
This has been the formal report of several com
mittees of most able and reliable physicians, who;
for the sake of the public, have been at the trou
ble and risk to turn over the man's whole stock in
trade, piece by piece, and apply the best known
tests. Indeed, have you not personally known
some who have dealt with him, and who from
that time seemed to pine away as if by slow poi
son? As you think of this you seem to perceive a
subtile something in the air stealing in upon you
through your channel of observation and all crev
ices of doors and windows. Is it oxygen ? Is it
some delightful perfume? You do not need. to
ask long. With every step of the advancing
stranger the odor strengthens; and now, as he
stands knocking, such a wave of impurity comes
in upon you as almost upsets you. Your vitality
is consciously abating, your sight grows dim,
your lungs begin to labor.
With a caution to your servant, you turn an
extra bolt on your door. You hie to some upper
window, well to the windward, and, with some
misgivings at doing even so much, call out to the
man,

PARLEY THE PORTER. 205
"What do you want?"
' ' I have some valuable goods which I would
like to show you."
' ' I have no occasion for them. ' '
"Still, allow me to show them. They are
well worth seeing; as fine specimens of manufac
ture as you ever saw, and great bargains. If, on
seeing, you do not want them, very well, no harm
is done. I shall charge you nothing for the
showing. I take pleasure in it. ' '
' ' Still I cannot admit you. The fadt is, you
are charged on very high authority with carrying
about wares infected with the plague. I strongly
suspect that your goods are bads. If you have
anything to say against this charge, say it briefly.
I do not consider it exactly safe for me, in my
weak state of health and predisposition to the dis
ease you are said to carry about with you, to par
ley with you even at this distance. So speak up,
man, and make short work of it. I have no time
to lose on such unpromising cases as yours. Why
should I not say, Begone ? why not set my dogs
on you ? why not call in the police and have you
driven from the premises ?' '
Who would blame you for such downright
proceedings ? Certainly, no man who believes in
quarantine-grounds in time of pestilence, light
houses on dangerous coasts, pickets and fortifica-

?o6 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. ,
tions in time of war; in short, that yon old-fash
ioned thing which men call prudence is righteous,
useful, and necessary. Even should you refuse
audience altogether to the unpromising vagabond
at your door, you would scarcely be thought to
act harshly.
But should you adimit him to your parlors and
nursery, and to unlimited conference and display
of his perilous wares, the whole neighborhood
would exclaim against your amazing folly. They
would declare you unfit to have the care of your
self, much less of your family. They would put
a conservator over you. What are you but a pub
lic peril ? What promise you but another Massa
cre of the Innocents ?
If I were living in the Middle Ages, I would
live in a castle. That is the sort of house for
such times. Have I not many powerful and wide
awake enemies, for neighbors ? Are not the for
ests full of outlaws? Are not armed adventurers
riding about the country in every direction in
search of battle and spoil ? So up with the mas
sive keep. Raise around it, wide and high, the
rocky walls and towers. Set up the gates, mighty
with timbers of oak and plates of iron, thunder
ing as they close, ' ' We forbid thee. ' ' Mark out
the fosse, and dig it deep and broad, and, if pos
sible, fill it with water, even if in order to do it

PARLEY THE PORTER. . 207.
we have to turn the course of the Euphrates.
And now set the garrison in their places, the
watchmen in their watch-towers, the bowmen and
slingers at battlement and barbacan, at each bolted
and barred gate a keeper whose name is not Par
ley the porter. Let your orders be clear and de
cisive. Say, ' ' See to it that every approach is
watched. Challenge all comers. In such times
as these an unkept gate means destruction.
Challenge all comers ! ' '
Well, now that I think of it, we do live in the
Middle Ages, The times are disturbed. Free
lances are riding in every direction under the
name of free-thinkers. Our neighbors are no bet
ter than they should be; but the barons of unbe
lief and misbelief are pricking up and down, on
their hobbies of speculation, to capture or kill as
many vassals as possible. Under these circum
stances a prudent man will not live on an open
common, if he can do better. And he can do
better. Yonder is an eminence. There let him
build a stronghold. And when he has built it,
let him keep it like a man of war. See to Ear-
Gate and Eye-Gate especially. Stop all sus
pected persons afar off Do not let them in to
plead their cause. If you do, you Will rue it:
good-by to goods and chattels; good-by to the
castle itself; . nay, good-by. tp yourself. You have

_o8 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
become a vassal of Misbelief, and your health
and life, at the hands of this ruthless baron and
his savage over-lord Diabolus, are little better
than gone already. And all because you did not
mind the Saviour's caution, "Take heed what
ye hear. ' ' Have you raiment white as snow ?
Have a care where'er you go,
Or that snowy raiment soon
Will not brook the light of noon.
Have you tools like mirrors bright ?
Have a care lest breath of night,
Rainy day, or salt-air must,
Cloud those mirrors into rust.
Have you plants right choice and rare ?
To these plants give daily care ;
Woo the sun, repel the frost,
Water give, or they are lost.
Have you gold and silver store ?
Have a care, or soon no more
Will your coins consent to stay
Where all hands can filch away.
Have you richer store of health ?
Have a care, for this is wealth ;
Damps by night and heats by day
Watch to steal your life away.
Have you home and troops of friends ?
Will you keep them ? That depends
On what watch and ward you keep
O'er the sparks from hearth and lip.

PARLEY THE PORTER. 209
Have you fortress great and strong ?
Watch the foes that round it throng !
Else your gates and towers will flame
With their glory and your shame.
Have you virtue ? Such rich gem
Never blazed on diadem —
You must shield it night and day
By the buckler Watch and Pray.
All you have of good and grand
You must save with eye and hand;
As is saved the goodly ship
On a strange and stormy deep.

Tempted to Unbelief. 27

210 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
XIII.
WHAT DO THEY MEAN ?
I WENT into a bookstore. Having some curi
osity to know what sort of books that particular
establishment offered for sale, I looked the stock
carefully over. It consisted almost exclusively of
books designed or fitted to promote unbelief in
God and the Scriptures. I was not surprised, for
I knew that the bookseller was an outspoken
unbeliever. I passed into another establishment. It was
large, handsomely furnished, indeed almost pala
tial in size and appointments. Its shelves were
loaded with thousands on thousands of beautifully
made and attractively displayed volumes. On
looking them over, I found very many of them to
be in the interest of unbelief; some of them after
a very subtle and concealed fashion, but many
without any concealment whatever. Not a few
bore the imprint of the firm. Some of the most
specious and dangerous of all the modern assaults
on religion were included in the latter class. They
were books which no careful Christian father
would have in his house for any consideration.
They were books which few Christian pastors could

WHAT DO THEY MEAN? ' 211
see circulating freely among their people without
grief and alarm. And yet here they were; splen
didly advertised, and in course of being sent
through all the arteries of trade with the immense
push and commercial facilities of a great, veteran
Christian corporation. Was I surprised ? By no
means. I had known the fadt for years; and, in
common with most of the reading public, could
have directed inquirers off-hand to the greatest
publishers and distributers of infidel and atheistic
writings on this continent. No, I was not sur
prised, only puzzled for the hundredth time to
understand how Christian people could conscien
tiously lend themselves and their resources to do
such work.
I sat down on the outskirts of a city Bible
Class. There were in it some scores of young
men and women, evidently belonging to the more
influential classes. The teacher, I soon found,
was a man of fluency and shrewdness, and ambi
tious to shine as an acute and expert logician.
He was Deacon A  . After listening an hour
I went away sad. The questions proposed, the
answers given, the sort of discussion encouraged,
and the whole style of dealing with Scripture
went to make doubters and cavillers. I shall be
surprised if that Bible Class does not graduate at
no distant day many avowed infidels.

212 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
I took up a religious newspaper. I call it
such because it calls itself such, and is currently
spoken of as such. My eye fell on a review of a
new book whose whole drift, as I happened to
know, was in the direction of unbelief. It was a
very indulgent review. The praise buried the
censure fathoms deep. "Such an able author;
so careful, candid, fair-minded, judicial, and such
an admirable style ! To be sure, exceptions must
be taken to some things; but, on the whole, the
book is well worth reading, and indeed is one
which an intelligent man who wishes to keep
abreast of his age can hardly afford to do with
out." Between you and me, that book was
Hseckel's. Was I surprised? By no means, for
I had just been reading in another newspaper an
article credited to this, which assailed the histori
cal character of the Pentateuch, and claimed that
if Moses was not a myth he certainly came from
an ape. But were not these oversights, or, at
the most, those rare nods which even Jupiter must
be expected to make? Oh, no; this Jupiter has
a habit of such nodding. He does it almost every
week. Almost every week some article appears
which opposes, openly or strategically, some funda
mental religious doctrine, or helps some unbeliev
ing book into favorable notice and circulation in
thousands of families. Are the owners and edi-

WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 213
tors of this paper professed anti-religionists ? On
the contrary, they are professed Christians. Un
believers ! They resent the imputation. See how
many eminently spiritual and evangelical articles
by the first divines in the country grace their col
umns ! They only do as do Kitto's Encyclopaedia
and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They are men
whose business it is to hold up a mirror to the
times, who believe in giving even the devil his
due, and who do not believe in a Christianity that
is behind the age and cannot stand a blow or two
from the hammer of free discussion. And that
very copy of their paper contained an appeal from
them to Christian ministers to promote its circu
lation as likely to be of great service to them in
their work !
I found myself in a Reading Room and Circu
lating Library. It was a sort of free lunch for
the city youth. And I had some curiosity to
know what sort of food the rising generation in
that part of the city was having. So I went about
among the tables covered with periodicals and
among the shelves loaded with books, with pry
ing eyes. And it did not take me long to dis
cover on both tables and shelves, among current
periodicals and books, an amount of specious infi
delity that drove the blood from my cheek. Sand
wiched in among much that was excellent, some-

2i4 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
times put forward as hypothesis and sometimes as
proved science, sometimes approaching the city by
mining and sometimes trying to take it by storm,
here was printed unbelief to any extent in its most
gross and yet most taking forms. Who put it
there and kept it there ? A Committee of Direc
tion, none of whom probably would be willing to
be counted among the disciples of that Paine
whose Age of Reason they had provided in many
versions, from Tom's own to Bob's own, for the
sons and daughters of the much-tempted and
much-tempting Gotham; but most of whom, on
the contrary, worshipped in evangelical congre
gations and were even members of churches. As
Directors are apt to do, they had left their business
to one or two of their number, and the one or two
had been in favor of a "liberal" policy. They
thought religion could stand it.
I strayed into a ledture-room. I might as well
add that the ledture-room was a Christian sandtu-
ary. It was the largest and most comfortable
room in the village, and so it was being occupied
for a series of popular entertainments. There had
already been a Reading, a Concert, Tableaux, a
Fair, and now there was to be a scientific lecture
by a man of note. His coming had been loudly
heralded. The managers were enterprising men,
and bound to succeed; so pyrotechnic advertising

WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 215
was not spared, and language was put on its met
tle to tell of the "celebrated orator and philoso
pher who had consented to appear among them."
It was a full house. A great many young men
were there ; new barks with all their fresh white
sails flung jauntily abroad to catch whatever wind
might chance to be blowing. Well, it was an
unbelieving lecture from beginning to end. Had
its drift been accepted by the fathers of that com
munity, the lecturer would have had no sanctuary
to lecture in. His insinuations, his humor, his
anecdotes, his speculations, his assumptions were
in the interest of unbelief, were so many "flings"
at the Scriptures and even their underlying The
ism. Yet the lecture was politic after a manner;
and so, with its many graces of style and delivery,
was well fitted to unsettle faith in inexperienced
minds. Who were those Managers? Rank infidels
and atheists ? Do not think it. They were mostly
church members; and not one of them but would
have resented being called an opposer of religion.
But perhaps they were as much surprised as your
self at what they heard, having relied on the
man's gentlemanly instincts to keep him from
abusing his position? I am afraid not. They
knew the man. He was known all over the
country, not only for his unbelief, but also for the

216 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
outspokenness ' of it wherever he went. Indeed
this fadt, as I afterwards learned, had been pressed
upon the attention of the Committee before their
invitation was given. But no, they ' ' meant busi
ness. ' ' They wanted somebody who would draw.
They were bound to sell tickets. And they had
too good an opinion of the Christian cause to fear
its suffering from such a lecture.
Once more, and worse. I went into a College,
and talked with a Professor, and heard him talk
to the students. I was surprised. I did not ex
pect such things from that College. He was an
"advanced thinker," engaged in making "ad
vanced thinkers ' ' of some hundreds of young men,
gathered for the most part from Christian homes
with a view to a Christian education. Any more
of the instructors who shared his views? Yes,
two or three. And this was a Christian College
in the intent of its founders, and the very endow
ments which supported these men had been gath
ered with much pains from the scanty stores of
self-denying Christian people who wanted to do
something for Christ. Who put and keep these
men in their places ? A Board of Trustees com
posed chiefly of Christian ministers. They do not
like to be called illiberal and opposed to the prog
ress of science. Or, what is still more likely,
they have left the business of their trust in the

WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 217
hands of one or two men, and, like the Directors
of so many moneyed institutions, have contented
themselves with ratifying the suggestions of their
proxies. Still, they are the same men who re
cently met in Council and installed as pastor of a
parish a man who had not yet made up his mind
in regard to the inspiration of the Scriptures and
certain other Christian fundamentals. They did
it on the ground that he seemed a sincere inquirer
after truth; and time, it was to be hoped, would
ripen his inquiries into evangelical views. So
they set him in his place as the religious teacher
of a most important parish swarming with young
men. What will come of it time will determine.
But if a plentiful crop of weeds does not appear
in that garden — no thanks to the Ecclesiastical
Council. Is the Christian religion worth anything?
Can people do about, as well without a God as
with ? . Every Christian, in virtue of the fact that
he is a Christian, holds that faith in God and his
Son is an unspeakable blessing to the individual
and to society, and its loss an unspeakable disas
ter. God himself, in the wide sweep of his sur
vey, does not see an evil so radical and compre
hensive, so fruitful of mischief and disorganiza
tion, as religious unbelief. It is as much worse
than a pestilence as can well be imagined. What
Tempted tc UnbeUef. 2o

218 Tempted to unbelief.
should we think of a man who should make it
his business to send a plague all over the country,
by post and express, albeit in nice and perfumed
parcels? If a man sells alcoholic drinks iri our
town, we count him a public enemy, and, if pos
sible, hunt him, or at least his business, out of the
community. If a man publishes lascivious books,
the Police make a sortie upon him and suppress
his books, not to say the man himself. When my
son is dying of the profligacy or the drunkenness
which these men have developed in him, it does
not much appease my natural wrath to be told
that they did it in the way of business, and that,
if the temptation had been resisted, the boy would
have been all the stronger and better for it: and
should my son die of atheism at the hands of its
propagators, I should be as little satisfied with
such an excuse.
You must know that I have one very true
friend. At least he says he is such. He is almost
always present at my weekly receptions, and his
manner is very cordial. So far from making any
secret of his regard for me, he takes pains to pub
lish it. I have known him take extraordinary
pains for this purpose. He doubtless would feel
outraged were I to deny him the name of, friend.
But, after all, I must say that he is a very sin
gular sort of friend. Many such would be the

WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 219
ruin of me. Would you think it? this friend of
mine, like the bookseller of whom I have spoken,
allows his house to be made the headquarters for
all hints, insinuations, and gossip to my disad
vantage. It is a very nice house; very attradtive
from its situation, architectural merit, elegant
furniture, and good dinners. Anybody, by going
to this delightful place, can have the latest slan
der against me served up in the most delightful
style. And the owner is quite willing that any
body should come. In fadt, he keeps open house.
It is a place of great resort.
But this is not the worst of it. My friend not
only allows his house to be used to my disadvan
tage, but, like the bookseller and others of whom
we have spoken, he actually sets himself to give
as much currency to the attacks on me as possi
ble. He has business connections with all parts
of the country, his agents are coming and going
everywhere, and wherever they go they are di
rected to call attention to the stories against me
with a flourish of trumpets, to pique the curiosity
of the public in regard to them to the utmost, and
to see that they are put in their most specious
forms within the ears of the greatest possible
number. To be sure, it is all done in the way of
business, and I am told that a good consideration
is taken for what is given. How this helps the

__o TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
matter is not very plain to me. It is, however,
to my "friend;" and I am told further that, in
his view, he is doing me a very considerable ser
vice by the course he takes. My character will
shine all the brighter for these attacks. Friction
is good for solid silver. My friends will be stirred
up to defend me with new zeal and ability; and
the consequence will be that I shall have more
celebrity and influence than ever. It may be so.
Perhaps I ought to be thankful to the man for his
good offices. But, to tell the truth, I quite pre
fer the old-fashioned way of showing friendship.
And I have no doubt the Lord does the same.
A prince was once leading his forces in the
neighborhood of a castle that displayed a friendly
banner. To his surprise he found himself vigor
ously shot at from the walls and towers. He sent
to demand explanations. In due time a cour
teously-worded reply came; and the owner of the
castle begged leave to assure his illustrious friend
that personally he had the very best feeling toward
him; was far from being disposed to do him any
injury; in fact, was doing what in his judgment
would in the end best serve their common cause.
It was true that for the time being he had loaned
his ramparts and guns and gunners and powder
to the enemy; but, as for the ball, he had nothing
to do with the furnishing of that. The metal

WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 221
and the moulds in which it was run came from
the enemy only. And the baron felt sure that his
prince was so skilful, and so well armed, and so
well supported by his friends, that no amount of
firing with such ball would be of any real disser
vice to him. He had too good an opinion of him
and his troops to think otherwise. Nay, he ex
pected the happiest results. Under the firing his
liege would find his men getting yet more valiant
and expert in the art of war. Admirable defence
would be made, and in the last result it would be
found that his illustrious highness is stronger and
more illustrious than ever.
The prince was" unconvinced by this reason
ing, acute and plausible as it was. He fell into
great indignation, and replied, "Since this seems
to you a friendly way of proceeding,. I will try it
on you. I happen to know that your hereditary
enemy, the Earl of Redgrave, is on his march
against you, with intent to raze your fortress. I
will join him. He shall have the use of my troops
and guns and powder; as for the ball, he may fur
nish that. You see that on the whole this will be
quite a formidable-looking combination. Your
friends will naturally be alarmed, and will rally
about you. They will see the necessity of great
and skilful measures of defence; and so I shall be
the means of drawing out such zeal and efforts on

222 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
your side as will in the end greatly promote your
interest. To be sure, matters will look dark for a
time; but keep up good heart. Good causes are
bound to prevail ; if your cause is good, do not be
worried when my batteries open upon you. I
shall thunder away at my best; but it will still all
be in the most friendly spirit. I beg to assure
you that your valuable good will is fully recipro
cated. ' '
Have not we been finding fault with England
on account of the Alabama ? That vessel preyed
on our commerce till she became a public terror.
On inquiry it appeared that she was built in
English docks and by English workmen, and
with a very general understanding that when fin
ished she would do what she could to injure us.
We took offence. It seemed to us a very un
friendly thing to do. Perhaps we were mistaken.
Instead of getting angry over the matter, and
starting an International Board of Arbitration,
and pleading for heavy damages, it may be that
we should have been thankful to England, and
have paid her at least some handsome compli .
ments for the splendid lessons in patience and for
titude and naval tactics which she taught us. To
be sure, she did not claim so much as this, but
she did claim that, despite all appearances to the
contrary, she had always been our very good

WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 223
friend. But we were unreasonable enough not to
like that style of friendship, and even to presume
to think that England herself would not like a
return in kind. After all, was it so very unrea
sonable ?
In these days the diffusion of unbelief is chiefly
at the hands of men who dress in the Christian
uniform. They ought to be called to account for
this by the Christian public and their own con
sciences. It is utterly unjustifiable and shameful.
Whether they know it or not, these men are stri
king at the vitals of society after a far more com
prehensive and deadly way than are the men who
distil and vend intoxicating drinks or distribute
obscene books and pictures. And they can say
nothing for themselves which such men might
not urge in defence of their nefarious business.
Let them not talk about their confidence in the
truth, and of the increased breadth and strength
of the defences sure to be provided under assaults;
as well might the scoundrel who is tempting the
public to flagrant vice talk about the final triumph
of virtue and the moral strength men will get
from resisting temptation, and the glorious coun
teracting efforts that will be called forth by what
he is doing. What right have they to build and
equip Alabamas to prey on the religion and coun
try for which they profess friendship ? What right

224 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF.
have they to loan ramparts and munitions of war
for sharp-shooting at their own flag and at the
men who wear their own uniform? I do not
know, nor do they.
If such doings are friendship to Religion, it
altogether prefers enmity.

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