experience of mankind proves that experimental certainty regarding the
most important business of this life is impossible. By what process of
philosophical induction is religion alone put beyond the sphere of faith
and hope? If religious duties are not binding on us, unless religion be
scientifically demonstrated, then neither are moral obligations; for
these two can not be separated. Is it really so, that none but
scientific men are bound to tell the truth, and pay their debts; and
that a person may not fear God, and go to heaven, unless he has
graduated at college? The common sense of mankind declares that we live
by faith, not by science.

2. _We demand the knowledge of truths of which science is profoundly
ignorant._ Science is but an outlying nook of my farm, which I may
neglect and yet have bread to eat. Faith is my house in which all my
dearest interests are treasured. Of all the great problems and precious
interests which belong to me as a mortal and an immortal, science knows
nothing. I ask her whence I came? and she points to her pinions scorched
over the abyss of primeval fire, her eyes blinded by its awful glare,
and remains silent. I inquire what I am? but the strange and questioning
_I_ is a mystery which she can neither analyze nor measure. I tell her
of the voice of conscience within me--she never heard it, and does not
pretend to understand its oracles. I tell her of my anxieties about the
future--she is learned only in the past. I inquire how I may be happy
hereafter--but happiness is not a scientific term, and she can not tell
me how to be happy here! Poor, blind science!

3. _All our dearest interests lie beyond the domains of science, in the
regions of faith._ Science treats of things--faith is confidence in
persons. Take away the persons, and of what value are the things? The
world becomes at once a vast desert, a dreary solitude, and more
miserable than any of its former inhabitants the lonely wretch who is
left to mourn over the graves of all his former companions--the last
man. Solitary science were awful. Could I prosecute the toils of study
alone, without companion or friend to share my labors? Would I study
eternally with no object, and for no use; none to be benefited, none to
be gratified by my discoveries? Though you hung maps on every tree, made
every mountain range a museum, bored mines in every valley, and covered
every plain with specimens, made Vesuvius my crucible, and opened the