ties, that it is one of the most difficult things to be able to
say, with truth, that we are perfectly sincere; that I did not see
any difficulty in believing that there is many a man who, without
hesitation and without any conscious hypocrisy, would avow his
sincerity, who, upon being suffered to look into his own mind through
a moral solar microscope, would see there all sorts of misshapen
monsters, and turn away from the spectacle with disgust and horror;
that such a microscope (to speak in figure) might one day be applied
by that Power to whom only the human heart is fully known. I added,
however, that, if I knew more of his mental history for some years
past, (into which my affection-should never induce me impertinently
to pry,) I might, perhaps, in some measure, account for his scepticism;
that I could even conceive cases of minds so "encompassed with
infirmity," or so dependent on states of health, as to render such a
state involuntary, and therefore to take them out of the sphere of
our argument. But, apart from some such causes, I plainly told him I
could not permit myself to believe that religious scepticism could be
free from heavy blame, if only on the ground that such as feel it do
not act consistently with its maxims in other cases, where the
evidence is of the same dubious nature, or rather is much more dubious.
The parallel case would be, (if we could find it,) of a man whose
interest urgently required him to act one way or the other, and who,
instead of acting accordingly, sat down in absolute inaction, on the
score that he did not know what course to pursue. That indecision
would be always blamable. "Ah!" said I, "those cool heads and skilful
hands which pilot the little bark of their worldly fortunes amidst
such dangerous rocks and breakers, under such dark and stormy skies,
what can they say, if asked why they gave up all thought of religion
on the score of doubt, when its hopes are at least as high as those of
the schemes of earthly success, and its claims at least as strong as
those of present duty? What will they be able to say?

"O Harrington!" I continued, in some such words as these, "supposing
the draught of our present condition not to be such as I have sketched;
that the sceptical view of the gloom in which we are placed is the true
one, and that the Christian's is false; which, nevertheless, is likely
to be not merely the happier, but the nobler being,--he who sits down
in querulous repinin