dealings with the present and the future. From the nature of
ratiocination, it is obvious that the axioms, on which it is based,
cannot be demonstrated by ratiocination. It is also a trite observation
that, in the business of life, we constantly take the most serious
action upon evidence of an utterly insufficient character. But it is
surely plain that faith is not necessarily entitled to dispense with
ratiocination because ratiocination cannot dispense with faith as a
starting-point; and that because we are often obliged, by the pressure
of events, to act on very bad evidence, it does not follow that it is
proper to act on such evidence when the pressure is absent.

The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews tells us that "faith is the
assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen." In the
authorised version, "substance" stands for "assurance," and "evidence"
for "proving." The question of the exact meaning of the two words,
[Greek: hypostasis] and [Greek: elenchos], affords a fine field of
discussion for the scholar and the metaphysician. But I fancy we shall
be not far from the mark if we take the writer to have had in his mind
the profound psychological truth, that men constantly feel certain about
things for which they strongly hope, but have no evidence, in the legal
or logical sense of the word; and he calls this feeling "faith." I may
have the most absolute faith that a friend has not committed the crime
of which he is accused. In the early days of English history, if my
friend could have obtained a few more compurgators of a like robust
faith, he would have been acquitted. At the present day, if I tendered
myself as a witness on that score, the judge would tell me to stand
down, and the youngest barrister would smile at my simplicity. Miserable
indeed is the man who has not such faith in some of his fellow-men--only
less miserable than the man who allows himself to forget that such faith
is not, strictly speaking, evidence; and when his faith is disappointed,
as will happen now and again, turns Timon and blames the universe for
his own blunders. And so, if a man can find a friend, the hypostasis of
all his hopes, the mirror of his ethical ideal, in the Jesus of any, or
all, of the Gospels, let him live by faith in that ideal. Who shall or
can forbid him? But let him not delude himself with the notion that his
faith is evidence of the objective reality of that in which he trusts.
Such evidence is t