octor in divinity.' Ah! if all doctors in divinity had
been equally candid, the treatises on that dread subject would not
have been quite so voluminous; for we close them all alike with the
unavailing question, 'Why God not kill Debbil?'"

Observing this tendency to gravitate towards the abyss, I at last
said to him, 'I think, if I were you, having decided that there is
no religious truth to be found, I should dismiss the subject from
my thoughts altogether. Do as the Indian did, who struggled as
long as he could to right his canoe when he found he was in the
stream of Niagara; but, finding his efforts unavailing, sat himself
down with his arms folded, and went down the falls without stirring
a muscle. Let us talk no more on the subject. Why should you perplex
yourself, as you apparently do, about a thing so hopeless to be
found out as truth? 'What is truth?' said Pilate; and, as Bacon says,
'he would not wait for an answer.' It was a question to which, most
probably, he, like you, thought no answer could be given. If I were
you, I should do the same. Why perplex yourself to no purpose?"

"I should answer," said he, "as Solon did when asked why he grieved
for his son, seeing all grief was unavailing.' It is for that very
reason that I grieve,' was the reply. And in like manner I dwell on
the impossibility of discovering truth because it is impossible."

I acknowledged that it was a sufficient reason, and that it went to
account in some degree for a fact I had remarked in the few sceptics
I had come across,--genuine or otherwise,--that they seemed less
capable of reposing in their professed convictions than any one
else: it is of no avail, they say, to reason on such subjects; and
yet they are perpetually reasoning! They will neither rest themselves
nor let any one else rest. He confessed it, and said, "The state of
mind is very much as you have described it; and you have described
it so exactly, that I almost think you, my dear uncle, must know the
heart of a sceptic, and have been one yourself some time or other!"

We wound up the morning, which was beautiful, by taking a ride, in the
course of which I was amused with an instance of the sensitiveness with
which Harrington's cultivated mind recoiled from the grossness of vulgar
and ignorant infidelity. We called at the cottage of a little farmer, a
tenant of his, somewhat notorious both for profanity and sensuality.
Presuming, I suppose, on his young landlord's sus