the
case is clearly different; for even if it appears to be sheer credulity
to an outsider, that may be because he does not take into account the
additional evidence supplied by the moral facts.

Faith and superstition are often confounded, or even identified. And,
unquestionably, they are identical up to a certain point--viz. they both
present the mental state of _belief_. All people can see this; but not
all people can see further, or define the _differentiae_. These are as
follows: First, supposing Christianity true, there is the spiritual
verification. Second, supposing Christianity false, there is still the
moral ingredient, which _ex hypothesi_ is absent in superstition. In
other words, both faith and superstition rest on an intellectual basis
(which may be pure credulity); but faith rests also on a moral, even if
not likewise on a spiritual. Even in human relations there is a wide
difference between 'belief' in a scientific theory and 'faith' in a
personal character. And the difference is in the latter comprising a
moral element.

'Faith-healing,' therefore, has no real point of resemblance with 'thy
faith hath saved thee' of the New Testament, unless we sink the personal
differences between a modern faith-healer and Jesus Christ as objects of
faith.

Belief is not exclusively founded on objective evidence appealing to
reason (opinion), but mainly on subjective evidence appealing to some
altogether different faculty (faith). Now, whether Christians are right
or wrong in what they believe, I hold it as certain as anything can be
that the distinction which I have just drawn, and which they all
implicitly draw for themselves, is logically valid. For no one is
entitled to deny the possibility of what may be termed an organ of
spiritual discernment. In fact to do so would be to vacate the position
of pure agnosticism _in toto_--and this even if there were no objective,
or strictly scientific, evidences in favour of such an organ, such as we
have in the lives of the saints, and, in a lower degree, in the
universality of the religious sentiment. Now, if there be such an organ,
it follows from preceding paragraphs, that not only will the main
evidences for Christianity be subjective, but that they ought to be so:
they ought to be so, I mean, on the Christian supposition of the object
of Christianity being moral probation, and 'faith' both the test and the
reward.

From this many practical considerations ensue. E.