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the religious life always begins with a belief in specific propositions. The 
mature Christian may indeed believe in God and trust in God for everything; 
but religion begins with a specific belief in the statement, for instance, that 
we are sinners, or that Christ is an Almighty and loving Saviour. My dread 
of this distinction is partly owing to the fact that I think it an unjust dis- 
tinction, and partly to the further fact that it produces a tendency to suppose 
that all we have to do in order to be forgiven and to be made holy, is to 
have an indistinct trust in God, we do not know why, and we cannot 
tell how ; whereas I maintain, that the religious trust which moulds the 
character is reducible, if you examine it, to the most definite propositions, 
differing only from a belief in particular propositions, inasmuch as it involves 
a belief in many, and not simply a belief in one. On the chief question of 
the paper I confess that I am not convinced by the course of argument 
adopted. The “ ethics of unbelief” means, I presume, in Professor Clifford's 
writings, that not to believe is really a duty, until the facts are proved. 
What, then, is the “ ethics of belief ”? The paper says, substantially, that 
the ethics of belief means that v T e ought to believe, because to believe is 
an instinct, and a tendency to believe is essential to the good of society, and 
is the correlative of truth-speaking on the part of those we trust. Now 
there is no doubt that belief, or a tendency to believe, is an instinct. Hume’s 
statement that belief in testimony is the result of experience, is the very 
opposite of the fact. Men begin with a tendency to believe ; and it is dis- 
trust that is the result of experience. But why is it our duty to believe ? 
Professor M ace says, because it is an instinct”; but that does not really 
give a moral reason for belief. If you tell me, for example, as an historical 
fact, that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, and if you tell me also, that 
the sun goes round the earth, what is my duty in listening to the two 
statements ? According to Professor Wace, I am bound to believe both : 
I am to believe a thing because it is told me. But surely there is no duty 
or virtue in such belief. What I hold to be the sin of unbelief is the 
moral state in which we reject truth. Belief is “morally right,” only 
when it is sustained by evidence. I wish to have the truth spoken, 
I am so made. No doubt it is wrong to suspect needlessly, because 
that means uncharitableness and the imputation of motives. But the 
thing I call the sin of unbelief— that which is morally wrong— has always 
in it this element, that I am rejecting truth, because of the moral state of 
my nature. You tell me that sin is a great evil, a bitter thing, involving 
awful penalties and distress ; but that is not verified, and it cannot be 
verified in all its extent and meaning, in this life, at all. The very fact that 
it is not fully verifiable in this life, is one evidence we give for a future life. 
Why do I reject it ! If I reject it as an intellectual statement, simply 
because the evidence is defective, it does not seem to me that I am guilty 
of any sin at all ; but if, having sufficient evidence, I do not like to 
acknowledge the truth ; if there is a warping, through sin, of my moral 
nature, so that I do not recognize or feel the facts on which the proposition 
