elieve
not only what you have not seen, but what all experience and reason tell
you you never can see. They ask you not only to believe in a past
event, but in a past event outside of all reason, beyond all experience,
incapable of demonstration, unsupported by nature, opposed to all
natural laws--beneath the realm of reason, out of the light of
experience, under the shadow of superstition!

The great electric light of the intellect is turned off at the church
door. On one day out of every seven the human lamps enter in utter
darkness a field of superstition. During six days the light is turned
full on the world of commerce, science, art, and literature, and these
glow and grow and are examined by its rays. When, however, the signal
tolls from the steeple on the seventh day, the light is turned off for
that day, and for that topic alone; and then there is brought out once
more the old tallow candle of ignorance that hides in shadow the cobwebs
of undeveloped thought!

Use your noblest powers of thought freely in the bank; strain and
develop your ability to improve and control in the engine-room; train
and exert your judgment in literature and art; push and brighten and
sharpen your reason in science or political economy.

In the practical affairs of life faith will not help you. It is childish
and insecure. It will not honor your cheque; it will not prevent the
broken engine from hurling its human companion into eternity. It will
not prove the rotundity of the earth, nor establish a sound financial
basis for a nation. In all such matters it leads to nothing but
ignorance and disaster. In theology it is the one element of light.

As a test and an aid in this world, it is puerile and trifling; but the
depths of the Great Beyond it fathoms to a nicety. It gives no grasp
upon the truths of Time; but it is the all-sufficient hold on Eternity.
It leads to the discovery of no important principle here; but it holds
the keys to the secret chambers of divinity! It is an attribute of
childish development now. It is to indicate infinite mental superiority
hereafter!

It is a strange philosophy which asserts that a faculty which is a
hindrance to superiority in this world is the one thing needful for the
soul of man!

Give me the brain that dares to think! Give me the mind that grasps
with herculean power the rocks that crush the treasures of intellectual
growth, and tears them from their foundation! Give me the mind that
da