of the mint and cummin type, the fear of
theological error, and the overpowering terror of possible damnation,
which have accompanied the Churches like their shadow, I need not now
consider; but they are assuredly not small. If agnostics lose heavily
on the one side, they gain a good deal on the other. People who talk
about the comforts of belief appear to forget its discomforts; they
ignore the fact that the Christianity of the Churches is something
more than faith in the ideal personality of Jesus, which they create
for themselves, _plus_ so much as can be carried into practice,
without disorganising civil society, of the maxims of the Sermon on
the Mount. Trip in morals or in doctrine (especially in doctrine),
without due repentance or retractation, or fail to get properly
baptized before you die, and a _plebiscite_ of the Christians of
Europe, if they were true to their creeds, would affirm your
everlasting damnation by an immense majority.

Preachers, orthodox and heterodox, din into our ears that the world
cannot get on without faith of some sort. There is a sense in which
that is as eminently as obviously true; there is another, in which, in
my judgment, it is as eminently as obviously false, and it seems to me
that the hortatory, or pulpit, mind is apt to oscillate between the
false and the true meanings, without being aware of the fact.

It is quite true that the ground of every one of our actions, and the
validity of all our reasonings, rest upon the great act of faith,
which leads us to take the experience of the past as a safe guide in
our 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 "evide