ll surely see that faith
in this sense, and credulity, a belief without inquiry, are the
very reverse of each other, and how much superior is the former to
the latter. Credulity is a mere feather, liable to be blown about
with every veering wind of doctrine. Faith, as St. Paul means it,
is as firm as a castle on a rock, where the foundations have been
carefully examined and tested, before the building was proceeded
with.

In collateral evidence of what I have just said, I may instance the
often-repeated injunction to accept things as little children;
which cannot mean with the ignorance and helpless submission of
infancy, but with minds free from bigotry, bias, or prejudice, like
those of little children, and with an inclination, like them, to
receive instruction. At what period of life do any of us learn so
rapidly and eagerly as in childhood? We acquire new ideas every
time we open our eyes; we are ever attracted by something we have
not observed before; every moment adds to our knowledge. If you
give a child something to eat it has not been accustomed to, does
it swallow it at once without examination? Does it not rather look
at, smell, feel, and then taste it? And if disagreeable, will it
eat merely because the new food was given to it for that purpose?
On the contrary, it is more inclined to reject the gift until
influenced by your eating some yourself, or by other modes of
persuasion. Let us then, in like manner, examine all that is
offered to our belief, and test it by the faculties with which the
great God has endowed us. These rare senses and powers of reasoning
were given to be used freely, but not audaciously, to discover, not
to pervert the truth. Why were so many things presented as through
a veil, unless to stimulate our efforts to clear away the veil, and
penetrate to the light? I think it is plain that St. Paul, while he
calls upon us to believe, never intended that we should be
passively credulous. [Footnote: My son might have further enforced
his view by a passage from St. Paul, 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5
verse 21, had it occurred to him: "Prove all things; hold fast that
which is good." By this the apostle implies, according to
Archbishop Secker's commentary, all things which may be right or
wrong according to conscience. And by "proving them" he means, not
that we should try them by experience, which would be an absurd and
pernicious direction, but that we should examine them by our
faculty of jud