ience, and without it
would never begin the search after a system of knowledge. All scientific
experiment is but a search after order, and order is only another name
for intelligence--for God. Deprive us of this fundamental faith in cause
and effect, order and regularity--of reason, in short--and science
becomes as impossible to man as to the orang-outang. _All science, even
in its first principles, rests upon faith._

Not only science, reason, also, is founded upon faith; for we can not
prove by reason the truths which form the data of reasoning. The
intuitions of the mind, which form the postulates necessary to the first
process of reasoning, are believed, not proven. When the wise fool
attempted to prove his own existence by the celebrated sophism, "I
think, therefore I exist," he necessarily postulated his existence in
order to prove it. How did he know that there was an "I" to think? And
how did he know that the "I" thought? Certainly not by any process of
reasoning, but by faith. He believed these truths; but could never
reason them into his consciousness. Faith, then, underlies reason
itself.

We may now proceed to inquire whether or not faith, which we have found
so prevalent even among those who repudiate it, is a thing to be ashamed
of; or if it be a sufficiently certain and reliable basis for human life
and conduct.

1. We are met at the very outset by the great fact that God has so
constituted the world and everything in it, that _in all the great
concerns of life we are necessitated to depend on faith_; without any
possibility of reaching absolute certainty regarding the result of any
ordinary duty. We sow without any certainty of a crop, or that we may
live to reap it. We harvest, but our barns may be burned down. We sell
our property for bank-bills, but who dare say they will ever be paid in
specie? We start on a journey to a distant city, but even though you
insure your life, who will insure that fire, or flood, or railroad
collision may not send you to the land whence there is no return?

Science is the child of yesterday; but from the beginning of the world
men have lived by faith. Before science was born, Cain tilled his ground
without any mathematical demonstration that he should reap a crop. Abel
fed his flock without any scientific certainty that he should live to
enjoy its produce; and Tubal Cain forged axes and swords without any
assurance that he should not be plundered of his wages. All the