le, faith
in the possibilities of freedom trusted in the hands of the people. And
this faith created a new nation.

If there had been doubt in the heart of Abraham Lincoln, again the
history of the world would have been &hanged. He believed that "Right
is right, since God is God, And right the day must win: To doubt would
be disloyalty, To falter would be sin."

You see, then, here is another field where you had better be wary of
doubt. Do not doubt yourself, do not doubt the possibilities of noble
action, noble character, of achievement. We say of a young man entering
life, brimful of enthusiasm, that all this will be toned down by and
by; and we speak of it as though the enthusiasm itself somehow was a
fault or a folly. And yet it is just this enthusiasm of the young men
that moves and lifts the world. It is this faith in themselves and in
the possibility of great things, it is this faith that lies at the
heart of every invention, of every great discovery, of every
magnificent achievement. Read the history of invention. The world is
full of stories of men who got a new idea. They were laughed at, they
were told it was impracticable; and, if they had been laughed out of
it, it would have been impracticable. It was their faith in the
possibility of some great new thing, their faith in the resources of
the universe, their faith in themselves as able to discover some new
truth and make it applicable to the needs of the world, it was this
faith which has been at the root of the grandest things that have ever
been done.

It is this which was in the heart of Columbus as he sailed out towards
the West. It is this which was in the heart of Magellan as he studied
the shadow of the earth across the face of the moon, and believed in
the story that shadow told him against the constituted authorities of
the world.

But now let us turn sharply, and find out where doubt does come in, and
where it is as honorable, as noble, as necessary as faith.

People misuse this word "faith." Doubt applies to all questions of fact
that may be investigated, to all questions of history, to all questions
open to the exercise of the critical faculty. For example, if I am told
that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and I say I accept that statement on
faith, I am abusing the dictionary. I have no business to accept it on
faith. Faith has nothing whatever to do with it. It is a pure matter of
scholarship. It is a matter of study, of investigation, a mat