le and docile, is
ever willing to listen to the voice by which alone truth and wisdom can
effectually reach her.

It has been shown by Butler in the fourth and fifth chapters (Part I.)
of his great work, that the entire constitution and condition of man,
viewed in relation to the present world alone, and consequently all the
analogies derived from that fact in relation to a future world, suggest
the conclusion that we are here the subjects of a probation discipline,
or in a course of education for another state of existence. But it
has not, perhaps, been sufficiently insisted on, that if in the actual
course of that education, of which enlightened obedience to the 'law
of virtue,' as Butler expresses it, or, which is the same thing, to the
dictates of supreme wisdom and goodness, is the great end, we give an
unchecked ascendency to either Reason or Faith, we vitiate the whole
process. The chief instrument by which that process is carried on is
not Reason alone, or Faith alone, but their well-balanced and reciprocal
interaction. It is a system of alternate checks and limitations, in
which Reason does not supersede Faith, nor Faith encroach on Reason. But
our meaning will be more evident when we have made one or two remarks
on what are conceived to be their respective provinces. In the domain
of Reason men generally include, 1st, what are called 'intuitions,'
2d, 'necessary deductions' from them; and 3d, deductions from their own
direct 'experience; while in the domain of Faith are ranked all truths
and propositions which are received, not without reasons indeed, but
for reasons underived from the intrinsic evidence (whether intuitive or
deductive, or from our own experience) of propositions themselves;--for
reasons (such as credible testimony, for example,) extrinsic to the
proper meaning and significance of such propositions: although such
reasons, by accumulation and convergency, may be capable of subduing
the force of any difficulties or improbabilities, which cannot be
demonstrated to involve absolute contradictions.*

____

* Of the first kind of truths, or those received by intuition, we have
examples in what are called 'self-evident axioms,' and 'fundamental
laws' or 'conditions of thought,' which no wise man has ever attempted
to prove. Of the second, we have examples in the whole fabric of
mathematical science, reared from its basis of axioms and definitions,
as well as in every other necessary deduction from