because he
could not justify by philosophy the truth which conscience and nature
are dinning into his ears: that there is a God the Rewarder of them that
seek Him?

_Sept. Oct._ 1898.

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: "A hysterical fit indicates a lamentable instability of the
nervous system. But it is by no means certain _a priori_ that every
symptom of that instability, without exception, will be of a
degenerative kind. The nerve-storm, with its unwonted agitations, may
possibly lay bare some deep-lying capacity in us which could scarcely
otherwise have come to light. Recent experiments on both sensation and
memory in certain abnormal states have added plausibility to this view,
and justify us in holding that in spite of its frequent association with
hysteria, ecstasy is not necessarily in itself a morbid symptom."
(F.W.H. Myers, _Tennyson as a Prophet_.)]

[Footnote 2: _The Retreat_. By Henry Vaughan.]

XXII.

ADAPTABILITY AS A PROOF OF RELIGION.

Much as we may think of the abstract and objective value of the treatise
_De vera religione_, which forms the usual introduction to those _cursus
theologici_ whose multiplication of late has been so remarkable, it can
hardly be denied that its cogency is much diminished for the large
number of those thinkers who repudiate the philosophical presuppositions
upon which that treatise rests. As long as negation halted before that
minimum of religious truth which is in some way accessible to
reason,--before belief in God and in immortality; as long as the
principles and methods of proof by which "natural theology" reached its
conclusion were admitted even by those who denied those conclusions, an
apologetic such as we are speaking of had an undoubted practical
value--not indeed as sufficing to bring conviction to the unwilling or
ill-disposed, not as a cause of faith, but as removing an obstacle which
existed in the supposed incompatibility of revealed truth with these
same rational principles and processes.

Apart from this preparation of the intellect, to which perhaps the name
"apologetic" should be more strictly reserved, a prior and more
important need was the disposing of the will and affections to the
acceptance of the truth. For, in a very real sense, love is the root of
faith; and the wish that a thing should be true, not only stimulates the
mind to inquire and investigate, but also creates a fear of
self-deception and a spirit of incredulity which is the