you whenever you think of the happy effect
Christianity has had on your own hearts and lives. They come to your
minds whenever you look on the prevailing vices and miseries of society,
which result from a want of Christianity. They touch your heart, as well
as convince your judgment. But I neither saw them in their true light
nor in their full extent before I fell into doubt; so that they were
unable to make up for the deficiency in the external evidences, and to
check my growing tendency to unbelief.

19. There were other influences that helped me down to unbelief.
Negative criticism, pulling things to pieces with a view to find faults,
to which our modern philosophers give the fine name of _Analysis_, tends
to cause doubt about every thing. It eats out of one the very soul of
truth, of love, and of faith. It tends naturally to kill all our good
instincts and natural affections, and to render not only religion, but
philosophy, virtue and happiness impossible. The Cartesian system of
reasoning, which begins by calling in question every thing, and which
refuses to believe anything without formal proof, is essentially
vicious. The man who adopts it and carries it out thoroughly, must
necessarily become an infidel, not only in religion, but in morals and
philosophy. And he must become intolerably miserable, and destroy
himself, unless, like John S. Mill, he can find out some method of
deceiving himself.

And this is the system of reasoning now in vogue. This vicious system I
adopted, and it hastened my fall into unbelief as a matter of course.
Not one of all the most important things on earth admits of proof in
this formal way. You cannot prove your own existence in this way. You
cannot prove the existence of the universe. You cannot prove the
existence of God. You cannot prove that there are such things as vice
and virtue, good and evil. You cannot prove that men ought to marry,
rear families, form governments, live in society, tell the truth, be
honest, restrain their appetites and passions, or abstain from treachery
and murder. All reasonings in favor of religion, virtue, society,
philosophy, must rest on assumptions,--must take a number of things for
granted,--must take for granted the truth and goodness of those
instincts, sentiments, and natural affections which constrain us to be
religious, social, and moral, independent of argument. All reasoning, to
be of any use, must begin, not with doubt, but belief. The reas