AGNOSTICISM. y6j 



they ignore the fact that the Christianity of the churches is some- 

 thing more than faith in the ideal personality of Jesus, which 

 they create for themselves, plus so much as can be carried into 

 practice, without disorganizing civil society, of the maxims of the 

 Sermon on the Mount. Trip in morals or in doctrine (especially 

 in doctrine), without due repentance or retractation, or fail to get 

 properly baptized before you die, and a plebiscite of the Christians 

 of Europe, if they were true to their creeds, would affirm your 

 everlasting damnation by an immense majority. 



Preachers, orthodox and heterodox, din into our ears that the 

 world can not get on without faith of some sort. There is a sense 

 in which that is as eminently as obviously true ; there is another, 

 in which, in my judgment, it is as eminently as obviously false, 

 and it seems to me that the hortatory, or pulpit, mind is apt to 

 oscillate between the false and the true meanings, without being 

 aware of the fact. 



It is quite true that the ground of every one of our actions, 

 and the validity of all our reasonings, rest upon the great act of 

 faith, which leads us to take the experience of the past as a safe 

 guide in our dealings with the present and the future. From the 

 nature of ratiocination it is obvious that the axioms on which it 

 is based can not be demonstrated by ratiocination. It is also a 

 trite observation that, in the business of life, we constantly take 

 the most serious action upon evidence of an utterly insufficient 

 character. But it is surely plain that faith is not necessarily en- 

 titled to dispense with ratiocination because ratiocination can not 

 dispense with faith as a starting-point ; and that because we are 

 often obliged, by the pressure of events, to act on very bad evi- 

 dence, it does not follow that it is proper to act on such evidence 

 when the pressure is absent. 



The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews tells us that " faith is 

 the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen." 

 In the authorized version " substance " stands for " assurance," 

 and "evidence" for "the proving." The question of the exact 

 meaning of the two words, vTroaraaig and t?Leyxog, affords a fine 

 field of discussion for the scholar and the metaphysician. But I 

 fancy we shall be not far from the mark if we take the writer to 

 have had in his mind the profound psychological truth that men 

 constantly feel certain about things for which they strongly hope, 

 but have no evidence, in the legal or logical sense of the word ; 

 and he calls this feeling " faith." I may have the most absolute 

 faith that a friend has not committed the crime of which he is 

 accused. In the early days of English history, if my friend could 

 have obtained a few more compurgators of like robust faith, he 

 would have been acquitted. At the present day, if I tendered my- 

 self as a witness on that score, the judge would tell me to stand 



