DIFFICULTIES OP BELIEF. 



175 



noble men — from time to time ? There are many minds in our 

 time to whom this difficulty is a positive nightmare. More 

 than any other it oppresses those who, possessing sincere and 

 real faith, are gifted with strong imagination and sympathy. 



To such I would say, in regard to this problem above all, it 

 is true that if the difficulties of belief are great, the difficulties 

 of unbelief are greater. The horror of the pain of the univei se 

 becomes unspeakable if we lose our faith in a God who will 

 brincr blessini;: out of evil and make all thino:s w^ork tog-ether fur 

 good. 



And we have the greatest and best of reasons for believing 

 that it is of the very essence of the Divine Nature to bring 

 good out of evil and over-rule all things for a final blessedness. 

 For underlying all our thought and all our life — our commonest 

 experiences as well as our science and our philosophy — there is 

 one fundamental principle. It is this : the supreme power 

 which works in the universe is trustworthy. Here is the basis 

 of our confidence that what is true to-day will not be false 

 to-morrow. It is the bed-rock on which rests our conviction 

 that there is an order in the world which will not put us to 

 utter confusion. It is the principle on which science depends 

 in its discovery of the laws of nature, a principle w^hich is ever 

 gaining a larger relation to all that we hold for truth and 

 certainty. And, in the last resort, what can this principle 

 mean but this, that God will not fail the creatures whom He 

 has made and who put their trust in Him. 



Discussion. 



The Chairman proposed a hearty vote of thanks to the Bishop 

 for his admirable paper and deferred further remarks to the close 

 of the discussion. 



Professor Hull seconded, and discussion followed. 



Dr. W. Woods Smyth said: We are indebted to the Lord 

 Bishop of Down and Connor for his brief but masterly sketch of 

 Faith's difficulties, and we must be pleased to find that he lays the 

 blame at the door not of Science only, but at the door also of those 

 who have originated them and continue to cultivate them, namely, 

 the theologians. It is not long since Professor Orchard contributed 

 to us a paper pointing out that men of science were not perplexed 

 with the worst of these difficulties. And it was shown that they 

 existed mainly in the minds of the theologians themselves, and 



