22 THE LIGHT OF DAY 



a future life can hardly be of a feather's weight, 

 because he seeks to prove by reason or comparison 

 that which experience alone can settle. 



Paul reasoned from analogy when he sought to 

 prove the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. 

 He appealed to a perfectly natural and familiar 

 phenomenon, namely, the decay and transformation 

 of a kernel of wheat in the ground before it gives 

 birth to the stalk and the new grain. But see how 

 the doctrine which he maintained so eloquently has 

 faded, or is fading, from the mind of even orthodox 

 Christendom ! Analogy is valuable as rhetoric, but 

 in the serious pursuit of truth it can be of little ser- 

 vice to us. When employed for its argumentative 

 force, it proceeds upon the theory that it two things 

 be compared, a matter in question with a matter 

 about which there can be no question, and the former 

 be found to agree in its rationale with the latter, 

 the presumption is that it is true as the latter is 

 true. But this mode of reasoning is of no value in 

 religious matters, because here we shape the un- 

 known from our knowledge of the known, and the 

 agreement between the two is already assured. The 

 world of myth and fable bears a resemblance more 

 or less striking to the real world, but does that 

 aflford any ground for our accepting the myths and 

 fables as actual facts and occurrences ? 



Suppose the doctrine of Christian conversion, as 

 expounded by Paul, is found to agree with certain 

 well-known and universal facts of human life, does 

 that prove the doctrine to be true ? Or does it 



