34 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



by persons -who are not so easily affected by the 

 contagion of blind faith. There is no falsity so 

 gross that honest men and, still more, virtuous 

 women, anxious to promote a good cause, will 

 not lend themselves to it without any clear con- 

 sciousness of the moral bearings of what they are 

 doing. 



This modern reproduction of the ancient prophet, 

 with his "Thus saith the Lord," " This is the work 

 of the Lord," steeped in supernaturalism and glory- 

 ing in blind faith, is the mental antipodes of the 

 philosopher, founded in naturalism and a fanatic for 

 evidence, to whom these affirmations inevitably sug- 

 gest the previous question : " How do you know that 

 the Lord saith it?" "How do you know that the 

 Lord doeth it?" and who is compelled to demand 

 that rational ground for belief, without which, to 

 the man of science, assent is merely an immoral 

 pretence. 



And it is this rational ground of belief which 

 the writers of the Gospels, no less than Paul, and 

 Eginhard, and Fox, so little dream of offering that 

 they would regard the demand for it as a kind of 

 blasphemy. 



To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in 

 intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as 

 to object to live one's life, with due thought for the 

 morrow, because no man can be sure he will be alive 

 an hour hence. 



I verily believe that the great good which has 

 been effected in the world by Christianity has been 

 largely counteracted by the pestilent doctrine on 



