Nor do we well
know what thousands who neglect religion on account of the alleged
uncertainty of its evidence could reply, if God were to say to them,
'And yet on such evidence, and that far inferior in degree, you have
never hesitated to act, when your own temporal interests were concerned.
You never feared to commit the bark of your worldly fortunes to that
fluctuating element. In many cases you believed on the testimony of
others what seemed even to contradict your own senses. Why were you so
much more scrupulous in relation to ME?'
The above examples are fair illustrations, we venture to think, of the
conditions under which we are required to believe the far higher truths,
attended no doubt with great difficulties, which are authenticated in
the pages of the two volumes (Nature and Scripture) which God has put
into our hands to study; of the conditions to which He subjects us
in training us for a future state, and developing in us the twofold
perfection involved in the words 'a reasonable faith.' If the
considerations just urged were duly borne in mind, we cannot help
thinking that they would afford (where any modesty remained) all answer
to most of those forms of unbelief which, from time to time, rise up in
the world, and not least in our own day.
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