on that I am competent to
judge of that doctrine; nay, I shall be quoted as evidence of its truth,
while I live, and cited, after I am dead, as testimony in its behalf.
But if I utter any ever so slight Anti-Muggletonian sentiment, then I
become incompetent to form any opinion on the matter. This, you cannot
fail to observe, is exactly the way the pseudo-sciences go to work, as
explained in my Lecture on Phrenology. Now I hold that he whose
testimony would be accepted in behalf of the Muggletonian doctrine has a
right to be heard against it. Whoso offers me any article of belief for
my signature implies that I am competent to form an opinion upon it; and
if my positive testimony in its favor is of any value, then my negative
testimony against it is also of value.

I thought my young friend's attitude was a little too much like that of
the Muggletonians. I also remarked a singular timidity on his part lest
somebody should "unsettle" somebody's faith,--as if faith did not require
exercise as much as any other living thing, and were not all the better
for a shaking up now and then. I don't mean that it would be fair to
bother Bridget, the wild Irish girl, or Joice Heth, the centenarian, or
any other intellectual non-combatant; but all persons who proclaim a
belief which passes judgment on their neighbors must be ready to have it
"unsettled," that is, questioned, at all times and by anybody,--just as
those who set up bars across a thoroughfare must expect to have them
taken down by every one who wants to pass, if he is strong enough.

Besides, to think of trying to water-proof the American mind against the
questions that Heaven rains down upon it shows a misapprehension of our
new conditions. If to question everything be unlawful and dangerous, we
had better undeclare our independence at once; for what the Declaration
means is the right to question everything, even the truth of its own
fundamental proposition.

The old-world order of things is an arrangement of locks and canals,
where everything depends on keeping the gates shut, and so holding the
upper waters at their level; but the system under which the young
republican American is born trusts the whole unimpeded tide of life to
the great elemental influences, as the vast rivers of the continent
settle their own level in obedience to the laws that govern the planet
and the spheres that surround it.

The divinity-student was not quite up to the idea of the commo