seeks and needs a simpler navigation than this troublesome and intricate
course, by star and chart, compass and lead line; and that this
responsibility, of ever

'Sounding on his dim and perilous way,'

is too grave for so feeble a nature; we answer that such is his actual
condition. This is a plain matter of fact which cannot be denied. The
various principles of his constitution, and his position in relation to
the external world, obviously and absolutely subject him to this very
responsibility throughout his whole course in this life. It is never
remitted or abated: resolves are necessitated upon imperfect evidence;
and action imperatively demanded amidst doubts and difficulties in which
reason is not satisfied, and faith is required. To argue therefore,
that God cannot have left man to such uncertainty, is to argue, as the
pertinacious lawyer did, who, on seeing a man in the stocks, asked him
what he was there for; and on being told, said, 'They cannot put you
there for that.' 'But I am here,' was the laconic answer.

The analogy, then, of man's whole condition in this life might lead us
to expect the same system of procedure throughout; that the evidence
which substantiates religious truth, and claims religious action, would
involve this responsibility as well as that which substantiates other
kinds of truth, and demands other kinds of action. And after all, what
else, in either case, could answer the purpose, if (as already said)
this world be the school of training of man's moral nature? How else
could the discipline of his faculties, the exercise of patience,
humility, and fortitude, be secured? How, except amidst a state of
things less than certainty--whether under the form of that passive faith
which mimics the possession of absolute certainty, or absolute certainty