in this complicated polygon of forces; but we are at least sure that,
if any one principle be so developed as to supersede another, no safe
equipoise will be attained. We all know familiarly enough that this is
the case when the affections or the appetites are more powerful than the
reason and the conscience, instead of being in subjection to them: but
it is not less the case, though the result is not so palpable, when
reason and faith either exclude one another, or trench on each other's
domain; when one is pampered and the other starved.* Hence the perils
attendant upon their attempted separation, and the ruin which results
from their actual alienation and hostility. There is no depth of
dreary superstition into which men may not sink in the one case, and no
extravagance of ignorant presumption to which they may not soar in the
other. It is only by the mutual and alternate action of these different
forces that man can safely navigate his little bark through the narrow
straits and by the dangerous rocks which impede his course; and if Faith
spread not the sail to the breeze, or if Reason desert the helm, we are
in equal peril.
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* It has been our lot to meet with disciples of the Oxford Tract School,
who have, by a fatal indulgence of an appetite of belief; brought
themselves to believe any mediaeval miracle, nay, any ghost story,
without examination, saying, with a solemn face, 'It is better to
believe that to reason.' They believe as they will to believe; and thus
is reason avenged. Reason, similarly indulged, believes, with Mr. Foxton
and Mr. Froude, that a miracle is even an impossibility; and this is the
'Nemesis' of faith.
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If it be said that this is a disconsolate and dreary doctrine; that man