gard to many of the
difficulties, in both cases, I set that the progress of knowledge and
science is continually tending to dissipate some, and to diminish, if
not remove, the weight of others: I see that a dawning light now
glimmers on many portions of the void where continuous darkness once
reigned; though that very light has also a tendency to disclose other
difficulties; for, as the sphere of knowledge increases, the outline
of darkness beyond also increases, and increases even in a greater
ratio. But I also find, I frankly admit, that on many of my difficulties,
and especially that connected with the origin of evil, and other
precisely analogous difficulties of Scripture, no light whatever is
cast: to the solution of them, man has not made the slightest
conceivable approximation. These things I submit to, as an exercise of
my faith and a test of my docility, and that is all I have to say about
them; you will not alter my views by dwelling on them, for your sense
of them cannot be stronger than mine.' Thus speaks the Christian; and
the Atheist and the Sceptic occupy ground as consistent. They say, 'We
agree with you Christians, that the Bible contains no greater
difficulties than those involved in the inscrutable "constitution and
course of nature"; but on the very principles on which the Rationalist,
or Spiritualist, or Deist, or whatever he pleases to call himself,
rejects the divine origin of the former, we are compelled to go a few
steps farther, and deny--or doubt the divine origin of the latter. It
is true that the Bible presents no greater difficulties than the
external universe and its administration; (it cannot involve greater;)
but if those difficulties are sufficient to justify the denial or doubt
of the divine authorship of the one, they are sufficient to justify
denial or doubt about the divine origin of the other.'--But as to you,
what consistent position can you take, so long as you affirm and deny
so capriciously? Who 'strain at the gnats' of the Bible, and 'swallow
the camels' of your Natural Religion? You ought, on the principle on
which you reject so much of the Bible,--namely, that it does not
harmonize with the deductions of your intellect, the instincts of
conscience, the intuitions of the 'spiritual faculty,' and Heaven knows
what,--to become Manichaeans at the least."

"But these very arguments," said one of the youths, "are just the
old-fashioned arguments of BUTLER, Which it is surely droll