The above examples are fair illustrations, we venture to think, of the
conditions under which we are required to believe the far higher truths,
attended no doubt with great difficulties, which are authenticated in
the pages of the two volumes (Nature and Scripture) which God has put
into our hands to study; of the conditions to which He subjects us
in training us for a future state, and developing in us the twofold
perfection involved in the words 'a reasonable faith.' If the
considerations just urged were duly borne in mind, we cannot help
thinking that they would afford (where any modesty remained) all answer
to most of those forms of unbelief which, from time to time, rise up in
the world, and not least in our own day. These are usually founded on
one or more supposed insoluble objections, arising out of our ignorance.
The probability that they are incapable of solution is rashly assumed,
and made to overbear the far stronger probability arising from the
positive and appreciable evidence which substantiates the truths
involved in those difficulties: a course the more unreasonable inasmuch
as--first, many such difficulties might be expected; and, secondly,
in analogous cases, we see that many such difficulties have in time
disappeared. On the other hand, it is, no doubt much more easy to insist
on individual objections, which no man can effectually answer, than it
is to appreciate at once the total effect of many lines of argument, and
many sources of evidence, all bearing on one point. That difficulty was
long ago beautifully stated by Butler*, in a passage well worthy of the
reader's perusal; and as Pascal had observed before him, not only is it
difficult, but impossible, for the human mind to retain the impression
of a large combination of evidence, even if it could for a moment fully
realise the collective effect of the whole. But it cannot do even this,
any more than the eye can take in at once, in mass and detail, the
objects of an extensive landscape.
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