ties of the weak, and not to please ourselves:" and
nothing would to me give greater happiness than to be able, as I am
willing, to remove any difficulties lying in the track of Faith before a
generous mind. I hang out no glistening holly-bush a-flame with its
ostentatious berries as promising good wine; but rather over my portal
is the humbler and hospitable mistletoe, assuring every wearied pilgrim
in the way, that though scanty be the fare, he shall find a hearty
welcome.

CONCLUSION.

I have thus endeavoured (with solicited help of Heaven) to place before
the world anew a few old truths: truths inestimably precious. Remember,
they cannot have lost by any such advocacy as is contained in the idea
of their being shown antecedently probable; for this idea affects not at
all the fact of their existence; the thing is; whether probable or not;
there is, in esse, an ornithorhyncus; its posse is drowned in esse:
there exists no doubt of it: evidence, whether of senses physical, or of
considerations moral, puts the circumstance beyond the sphere of
disputation. But such truths as we have spoken of do, nevertheless, gain
something as to--not their merits, these are all their own
substantially; nor their positive proofs, these are adjectives properly
attendant on them, but as to--their acceptability among the incredulous
of men; they gain, I say, even by such poor pleading as mine, from being
shown anteriorly probable. Take an illustration in the case of that
strange and anomalous creature mentioned just above. Its habitat is in a
land where plums grow with the stones outside, where aboriginal dogs
have never been heard to bark, where birds are found covered with hair,
and where mammals jump about like frogs! If these are shown to be
literal facts, the mind is thereby well prepared for any animal
monstrosity: and it staggers not in unbelief (on evidence of honest
travellers) even when informed of a creature with a duck's bill and a
beaver's body: it really amounted in Australia to an antecedent
probability.

Carry this out to matters not a quarter so incredible, ye thinkers, ye
free-thinkers; neither be abashed at being named as thinking freely:
were not those Bereans more noble in that they searched to see? For my
humble part, I do commend you for it: treacherous is the hand that roots
up the inalienable right of private judgment; the foundation-stone of
Protestantism, the great prerogative of reason, the key-note