Morning journal and courier., 1884-06-23
is his duty is evident from the following con


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 ! l. The nature of faith implies this duty Faith, whatever else it may be or imply, in l wolves definite and strong conviction. Con ! viction requires evidence. Evidence is tha l objective truth which compels assent. Sub l actively and spiritually faith in Q Fejee Is
 lander may be the same as 1t is in 8 cultivs
 ted and redecting man, but intellectually il cannot be- the same. Whatever the trutt I may be or in whatever form it may meet the I mind. whether by an argument or 8 person or dream or phantasy, it must convince 1 the intellect that something is true. It may l come through person, by 8 look or 8 word I as when the risen Lord said Mary and she 1 answered My Master, or he looked upon Pc ter ana Peter wept bitterly, or confro nted Saul on the way to Damascus, or appeared ] to Stephen at his martyrdom. It may be
 by memory, as when reprobate youth thinks of his mother at home on a Sunday ! morning when half around the globe and believes with repentant tears, or by sheer logic as when 8 hard-hearted Sadducee yields to an often studied argument that becomes suddenly luminous with convincing power. It may involve special spiritual in- huences, ss when 4he man rises into 8 soft ened and believing mood, he knows not
 why or how, and his thoughts bring tears to his eyes; and yet in every one of these cases there is intelligent consent to the truth and for good reasons.
 Now the thinking man just so far as he thinks at all knows the reasons of his con. victions. He is trained to analyze his thoughts and to justify them. It makes no difference with what his thoughts are occu- pied, just so far as he is educated he is trained to know what he believes, and why he believes it and to state it more or less dis tinctly to himself and to others. If there is any class of his activities of which this is not true it halts and becomes 8 drag upon the Lei a cn oay7ko ako
 If he fails to analyze an argument in political science his intelligence so far fails him. This Is pre-eminently true if mans religious convictions are not abreast with his reflect I've thinking upon other subjects. If he rarely asks himself why he believes in God or In Christ, or whether he believes at all, or, more important sstill if he rarely ineuires with intelligence what the Christian life in wolves in spirit or conduct, if his mind is oiankly lnane on points like these, he is so far doomed to be B dwarf or 8 sluggar6 in the Kingdom of God, and so much the more the more Of giant or prince he is in the oth- CT activities of his being Whatever his reason for this neglect may be, even if that reason takes the form of pious theory, it brings weakness into his character and inconsistency into his life.
 ?. The scholar must deny as well as be- heve, and he cannot deny intellgently with out distinctly giving his reasons Conviction
 in this critical age is negative as truly as it is positive. The thinking man must say no as positively as he says yes, and nearly as often, and he can do neither without understanding what he rejects as we'll as what he accepts. Even if he Is disinclined to say no to any body or any thing he cannot avoid thinking no whenever he meets man of another faith than his own, or @ man of no faith at all The sight of such one of itself aWakens the question:
 "Why do deny what he believes2 How can it be that he can believe what reject as ab- surd or irrational or at best as a half truth or an exaggerated truth on plausible error?" No educated man in these days. no thinking man who cares enough about his religion to have his care amount to semblapce of faith, can avoid these suggestions Why, in every village where two generations ago every man, woman and cbild was contented with the traditional orthodoxy we find in these days almost every variety of belief and no belief: We need not go to India to find Bu6dhists or Brahmins. They are not un- known in New England villages among the half dozen varieties of Christian believers with plenty of materialists, agnostics and pessimists thrown in. Indeed, our age has proved itself so fertile in breeding varieties as almost to have run itself out, and a tend enoy to reaction has set in in the form of mystical indefniteness or of faith in the philosophy of religion in general, with no creed in particular.
 But even with all this force of reaction JUS JnougnIs and theories of all sorts of men to the knowledge of those who read and think, and the question will constantly spring up ''Why do say no to what I reject?" and that question must be answered with some sort of intelligence.
 It is of no use to talk here of federation and charity. Both these duties have their place and it is large and important place, but that place does not in the least relieve ,1ISo k1,49 9,,k-, tive dissent and of doing this with q more or less distinct statement of his reasons Elm phatically is this true of the Christian scholar
 g. A critical age tests and exposes those statements and reasonings which are weak and less important.
 Instructed and disciplined intelligence dis criminates between Christian truths of pri- mary and secondary importance, truths which address the intellect as faith rather than the abstracting and defining faculty; truths which, SO to speak, appropriate to the great temple of the philosophical imagi- nation where all thinking men can meet in common as contrasted with those truths which are remanded to the closet or private chapel where special dialect is used and initiated disciples alone feel at home imagine myself arrested here by the objection that the logic already used re- uuires every intelligent believer to be a for nal and finished theologiap, whereas nothing seems at times less fitted to satisfy and firm the faith of many intellectual scholars than the technical terms and formal argu- ments of cateehisns and theological systems. reply that the terms and the reasonings which are required by the technical theolo- oian are by means essential to rational Christian faith. Modern science and modern criticism have rendered an i'm portant service in bringing theology into liv-
 .rHk tific and current speech. In this they have shown themselves to be by no means wholly demons of darkness herein, but have rem dered noble service to Christian truth as angels of light.
 Not only have they brought Christian philosophy into living relations with the phiIosophic thought and speech of the times. but they have helped man to distinguish be- tween those great truths which are essential to an earnest Christian life and those which are of minor practical importance. We con- tend that such difference exists without un- dertaking to draw the line between thu one class and the other. On the one side of this line are those grand and distinctive truths or rather those living powers which .hs they fill and expand the mind with some worthy conception of its own greatness, or rather overwhelm and confound it by the contrast of it's own httleness. Let us give a moment to some of these truths, divested of all time worn associations as, for example, to God, the self-existent, all-know- ing, all-present, creating and yet none the less working after plan from the beginning, as science and history both declare, after which more and more complex forms of matter emerge into being, with in whose mysterious and beftting frames life appears, putting on more and more woudrous adaptations and richer sense experiences in the beginning of animal life with fuller and still fuller germs of intelligence, with more and more touching anticipations of human affection and sympa- thy, till sovereign man appears, ''made lit tie lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor" Is there sueH& being thus related to the universe of matter and spirit? And can man know him and love him and trust in him and hope in him? Or is he utterly unknowable, smiting back into our very teeth the words of uplifted praise which we essay to utter, and repelling by his stony stare the fervent love which was going up to heaven from our hearts like the breath of the morning? Is this wonderful being person? Does he re- ioice in the supreme and finished glory of conscious intelligence and conscious life which qualities him to seek and find delight in sympathy with personal beings