e.

CHAPTER XIX.
WHENCE OUR BELIEF: REASON.

MY faith is the most reasonable thing in the world, and it must needs
be such. The Almighty gave me intelligence to direct my life. When He
speaks He reveals Himself to me as to an intelligent being: and He
expects that I receive His word intelligently. Were I to abdicate my
reason in the acceptance of His truths, I would do my Maker as great an
injury as myself. All the rest of creation offers Him an homage of pure
life, of instinct or feeling; man alone can, and must, offer a higher,
nobler and more acceptable homage--that of reason.

My faith is reasonable, and this is the account my reason gives of my
faith: I can accept as true, without in the least comprehending, and
far from dishonoring my reason, with a positive and becoming dignity,--
I can accept!--but I must accept--whatever is confided to me by an
infallible authority, an authority that can neither deceive nor be
deceived. There is nothing supernatural about this statement.

That which is perfect cannot be subject to error, for error is evil and
perfection excludes evil. If God exists He is perfect. Allow one
imperfection to enter into your notion of God, and you destroy that
notion. When, therefore, God speaks He is an infallible authority. This
is the philosophy of common sense.

Now I know that God has spoken. The existence of that historical
personage known as Jesus of Nazareth is more firmly established than
that of Alexander or Caesar. Four books relate a part of His sayings
and doings; and I have infinitely less reason to question their
authenticity than I have to doubt the authenticity of Virgil or
Shakespeare. No book ever written has been subjected to such a
searching, probing test of malevolent criticism, at all times but
especially of late years in Germany and France. Great men, scholars,
geniuses have devoted their lives to the impossible task of explaining
the Gospels away, with the evident result that the position of the
latter remains a thousandfold stronger. Unless I reject all human
testimony, and reason forbids, I must accept them as genuine, at least
in substance.

These four books relate how Jesus healed miraculously the sick, raised
the dead to life, led the life of the purest, most honest and sagest of
men, claimed to be God, and proved it by rising from the dead Himself.
That this man is divine, reason can admit without being unreasonable,
and must admit to be reasonable; and re