, room to work, the
chance of remedying the errors of the past, the opportunity to make
some forward strides and to help others on.

It is the end we aim at, the object we strive for, the ideal we set
before us, that gives value to what we do, and to what has been done by
us and others. Now our ends, our objects, and our ideals are matters
of the will, on which the will is set, and not merely matters of which
we have intellectual apprehension. They are not past events but future
possibilities. The conviction that we can attain them or attain toward
them is not, when stated as a proposition, a proposition that can be
proved, as a statement {14} referring to the past may be proved: but it
is a conviction which we hold, or a conviction which holds us, just as
strongly as any conviction that we have about any past event of
history. The whole action of mankind, every action that every man
performs, is based upon that conviction. It is the basis of all that
we do, of everything that is and has been done by us and others. And
it is Faith. In that sign alone can the world be conquered.

When, then, the man of religion proposes by faith to conquer the world,
he is simply doing, wittingly and in full consciousness of what he is
doing, that which every man does in his every action, even though he
may not know it. To make it a sneer or a reproach that religion is a
mere matter of faith; to imagine that there is any better, or indeed
that there is any other, ground of action,--is demonstrably
unreasonable. The basis of such notions is, of course, the false idea
that the man of sense acts upon knowledge, and that the man who acts on
faith is not a sensible man. The error of such notions may be exposed
in a sentence. What knowledge have we of the future? We have none.
Absolutely none. We expect that nature will prove uniform, that causes
will produce their effects. We believe {15} the future will resemble,
to some extent, the past. But we have no knowledge of the future; and
such belief as we have about it, like all other belief,--whether it be
belief in religion or in science,--is simply faith. When, then, the
man of science consults the records of the past or the experiments of
the present for guidance as to what will or may be, he is exhibiting
his faith not in science, but in some reality, in some real being, in
which is no shadow of turning. When the practical man uses the results
of pure science for some practi