But no other difficulties, however, great, will
justify unbelief, where man has all that he can justly demand,--evidence
such in its nature as he can deal with, and on which he is accustomed
to act in his most important affairs in this world (thus admitting
its validity), and such in amount as to render it more likely that the
doctrines it substantiates are true, than, from mere ignorance of the
mode in which these difficulties can be solved, he can infer them to be
false. 'Probabilities,' says Bishop Bulter, 'are to us the very guide
to life; and when the probabilities arise out of evidence which we
are competent to pronounce, and the improbabilities merely from our
surmises, where we have no evidence to deal with, and perhaps, from the
limitation of our capacities, could not deal with it, if we had it, it
is not difficult to see what course practical wisdom tells man he ought
to pursue; and which he always does pursue, whatever difficulties beset
him,--in all cases except one!
Such is the strict union--that mutual dependence of Reason and
Faith--which would seem to be the great law under which the moral school
in which we are being educated is conducted. This law is equally, or
almost equally, its characteristic, Whether we regard man simply in
his present condition, or in his present in relation to his future
condition,--as an inhabitant only of this world, or a candidate for
another; and to this law, by a series of analogies as striking as any
of those which Butler has pointed out (and on which we heartily wish his
comprehensive genius had expended a chapter or two), Christianity,
in the demands it makes on both principles conjointly, is evidently
adapted.
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