Lectures on the Evidences of Revealed Religion

now separates man from the spiritual world and from his Maker, the patient inquirer soon learns that that barrier was raised by man himself. He sees that the world and the constitution of nature have an intelligent Author and a just and benevolent Governor. He sees no reason why he may not expect help if he lifts an earnest prayer to the Author of his being. Instead, therefore, of antecedent doubts of a supernatural revelation, it seems to him the most natural thing in the world to look for one and to seek indications of its coming. His critical reason will be employed in scanning the evidence of the revelation whenever it appears, and applying to this evidence all the rules which guard us from imposture and deception, both without and within. But being satisfied that a revelation has been made, the true sceptic-that is, one, as I have here supposed, who has taken the right measure of his own powers-submits himself without reserve to the words of One who neither will deceive nor can be deceived, and who wills the felicity of His creatures. Heavenly truths, our examiner scans, not to find in them difficulties and objections, but guides and directions to eternal life. Under the Church's lead, he tests all pretenders to new interpretations, by truths already acknowledged, as, e.g., the false teachers of the apostle's day, by their willingness to acknowledge that "Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." The Catholic Church throughout the Christian ages is for him "the pillar and the ground of the truth," and for individual Christians in general, no more is needed than to live humbly and faithfully by its rule.

"Who thinks of asking if the sun is light,
Observing that it lightens ?"

It is hard to say why, or in what respect, such a sceptic as I have now imagined, who doubts until faith is fairly offered to him, should be thought to have taken a less noble view of man's nature than the other, or to have sacrificed his freedom, or to have neglected any precau

tion suggested by wisdom, or to have misused his reason, or to have suffered any deception through credulity, and not rather by the best use of reason and wisdom to have attained the highest rewards held out to the nature of man.