To argue therefore,
that God cannot have left man to such uncertainty, is to argue, as the
pertinacious lawyer did, who, on seeing a man in the stocks, asked him
what he was there for; and on being told, said, 'They cannot put you
there for that.' 'But I am here,' was the laconic answer.
The analogy, then, of man's whole condition in this life might lead us
to expect the same system of procedure throughout; that the evidence
which substantiates religious truth, and claims religious action, would
involve this responsibility as well as that which substantiates other
kinds of truth, and demands other kinds of action. And after all, what
else, in either case, could answer the purpose, if (as already said)
this world be the school of training of man's moral nature? How else
could the discipline of his faculties, the exercise of patience,
humility, and fortitude, be secured? How, except amidst a state of
things less than certainty--whether under the form of that passive faith
which mimics the possession of absolute certainty, or absolute certainty
itself--could man's nature be trained to combined self-reliance and
self-distrust, circumspection and resolution, and, above all, to
confidence in God? Man cannot be nursed and dandled into the manhood of
his nature, by that unthinking faith which leaves no doubts to be felt,
and no objections to be weighed; Nor can his docility ever be tested,
if he is never called upon to believe any thing which it would not be
an absurdity and contradiction to deny.
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