nnot help it. If there be a Supreme Ruler of the
universe, and if the posture of his intelligent creatures be that of
submissive obedience to him, it is inconceivable that a man can ever
have experience of his being willing to perform that duty with the
sort of demonstration which you demand; and, for aught we know, it
may be impossible, constituted as we are, that we should ever be
actually trained to that duty, except in the midst of very much less
than certainty. Now, if this be so,--and I defy you or any man to
prove that it may not be so,--then we are asking a simple impossibility
when we ask that we may be freed from these conditions; for it is
asking that we may perform our duty, under circumstances which shall
render all duty impossible." I pursued this subject at some length,
and reminded him that the supposed law of our religious condition was
throughout in analogy with that of the entire condition of our present
life, and in conformity with his own rule of the probable; that it is
probable evidence only that is given to man in either case, and
"probable evidence," as Bishop Butler says, "often of even wretchedly
insufficient character." Nature, or rather God himself, everywhere
cries aloud to us, "O mortals! certainty, demonstration, infallibility,
are not for you, and shall not be given to you; for there must be a sphere
for faith, hope, sincerity, diligence, patience." And as if to prove to
us, not only that this evidence is what we must trust to, but that we
safely may, He impels us by strong necessities of our lower nature
operating on the higher (which would otherwise, perhaps, plead for the
sceptic's inaction in relation to this as well as to another world)
to play our part; if we stand shivering on the brink of action,
necessity plunges us headlong in; if we fear to hoist the sail, the
strength of the current of life snaps our moorings, and compels us to
drive. I reminded him, that the general result also shows that, as man
must, so he may, can, will, shall, (and so through all the moods and
tenses of contingency,) do well; that faith in that same sort of evidence
which the sceptic rejects when urged in behalf of religion, prompts the
farmer to cast in his seed, though he can command no blink of sunshine,
nor a drop of rain; the merchant to commit his treasures to the deep,
though they may all go to the bottom, and sometimes do; the physician
to essay the cure of his patient, though often half in doubt w