elped to strengthen
my instinctive and hereditary faith in the divine origin of the Bible.

This my instinctive and hereditary faith was a great and beneficent
power, and would have proved an inestimable blessing, if it had been
preserved unshaken through life. And I am sorry it was not. I have no
sympathy with those who speak of doubt as a blessing, and who recommend
people to demolish their first belief, that they may raise a better
structure in its place. We do not destroy our first and lower life, to
prepare the way for a higher spiritual life. Nor do we kill the body to
secure the development of the soul. Nor do we extinguish our natural
home affections, in order to kindle the fires of friendship, patriotism,
and philanthropy. The higher life grows out of the lower. The lower
nourishes and sustains the higher. At first we are little more than
vegetables: then we become animals: then men; and last of all, sages,
saints, and angels. But the vegetable nature lives through all, and is
the basis and strength of the animal; and the animal nature lives, and
is the basis and strength of the human; and the human lives, and is the
basis and strength of the spiritual and divine. And the higher forms of
life are all the more perfect, for the vigor and fulness of those by
which they are preceded.

And so with faith. Instinctive faith is the proper basis for the faith
that comes from testimony. And the faith which rests on testimony is the
proper basis for that which comes from reason, investigation,
experience, and knowledge. And in no case ought the first to be
demolished to make way for the second, or the second discarded to make
way for the third. To kill a tree in order to graft on it new scions,
would be madness; and to kill, or discard, or in any way to slight or
injure our first instinctive child-like faith, to graft on our souls a
higher one, would be equal madness.

Our instincts are infallible. The faith to which they constrain us is
always substantially right and true, and no testimony, no reasonings, no
philosophy, ought to be allowed to set it aside. Testimony, and science,
and experience, may be allowed to develop it, enlighten it, and modify
it, but not to displace or destroy it. It is a divine inspiration, and
is essential to the life and vigor of the soul, to the beauty and
perfection of the character, and to the fulness and enjoyment of life.
If you lose it, you will have to find it again, or be wretched. If