the
issues of all knowledge, and sunders every ligament that binds us
to practical life. We must have faith in something or we stand on
no promises; we can predicate nothing. It may be said that in the
experience of the past we have a guide for the future; but then, must we
not have faith in experience? Do we not trust something which is not
yet demonstrated when we say "This cause which produced that effect
yesterday will produce a similar effect today or tomorrow?" How do we
know--positively know, that it will produce that effect, and what are
the grounds of our knowledge? This boasted "cause and effect," this
"experience," what right have we to rely upon it for one moment of
the future? Not for that moment has it demonstrated anything;--it
demonstrated for the time being, and the time being only; and our
confidence that it will do so again is faith, not sight--faith in
cause and effect, faith in experience, but faith after all. Hume, the
philosopher, has illustrated the positions which have now been taken.
"As to past experience," says he, "it can be allowed to give direct
and certain information of those precise objects only, and that precise
period of time which fell under its cognizance; but why this experience
should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for
aught we know may be only in appearance similar; this is the main
question on which I would insist. The bread which I formerly ate
nourished me; that is, a body of such sensible qualities was, at that
time, endued with such secret powers; but does it follow that other
bread must also nourish me at another time, and that like sensible
qualities must also be attended with like secret powers? The consequence
seems nowise necessary." And yet we eat our bread, day by day, without a
doubt or a fear. We sow the grain and we reap the wheat, but for all the
work is done in faith, and the whole process is steeped in mystery.
In that scattering of the golden seed, what confidence is expressed
in elements that we cannot see, in beneficent agencies that we cannot
control, in results that are beyond our power, and that in their growth
and development are full of wonder exceeding our wisdom. Give up faith;
say that we will act only upon that which is demonstrated and known,
say that we will walk only so far as sight reaches, and we completely
separate the present from the future, and stop all the mechanism of
practical life.

But if we take a wider view