it, the blessedness of the heart that keeps it; and, as incident to these truths, that of the unending existence of the soul.

These are not truths of the understanding; that is to say, they are not proved to exist in the world by virtue of any process of reasoning or by a logical induction from facts. They have never been proved by arguments, nor disproved by them. Reasoning does not give them, nor take them away, nor restore them; and the intellect has no proper claim to doubt about those truths upon which it is not competent to decide for or against, and which are outside of its proving or disproving process

es.

These truths are native to the human soul; they have sprung up spontaneously in every age, and wherever man is found; they are the outgrowth of natural, spiritual instincts, of the inborn affections of the heart, and the universal moral sentiment. They germinate in the mind of childhood before the reasoning processes begin. They are transmitted as it were, by natural inheri tance from parent to child. The young heart receives them, or the influences which nourish them, as the opening flower receives the sunshine and the dews. They are not matters of opinion, nor matters of observation, but of faith, such faith as is distinguishable alike from sense and from reason, is a spiritual perception. The understanding may come in and revise these conclusions of faith, and attempt to verify them or to set them aside; but, having no original jurisdiction over them, it will decide one way or the other respecting them, according as the spiritual per ception or faith is more or less clear and positive, or dim and halting. But it is not much matter how it decides; its decisions are of little or no weight. If it decides for these re

ligious truths, it is because they are already so strongly held that they do not need its confirmation; or, if it decides against them, it is because they are already virtually extinct, and have no spiritual hold in the soul. When, therefore, any one feels what he calls doubts about these primary truths of religion, it is something more than a common intellectual doubt which he feels, more than a doubt he may entertain on some point of history, of science, of evidence, or of worldly expediency, or any such matter that belongs to the province of the understanding. The difficulty is more than an intellectual difficulty. His soul is in a diseased and maimed state. It has somehow lost its inner eyesight, its original possessions. It is in such a state as the eye is in, when it cannot distinguish the form or color of natural objects, or as the intellect is in, when it cannot discern and give instant assent to an axiom in mathematics or a demonstration from facts. It is not that legitimate and healthy state of doubt which the intellect must often be in respecting matters belonging to its province. It is a diseased, abnormal state, a state contrary to nature. I do not say that it is necessarily a guilty or depraved state, but a diseased, unhappy, pitiable statea state to which intellectual processes did not reduce it, and from which they cannot restore it a something wanting among the inmost instincts and the profoundest experiences of the soul.

These primary truths are of such vital importance, are so absolutely essential to the dignity, the wellbeing, and the peace of the soul, that they are not left to the mercy of the slow and captious understanding, and not allowed to depend on intellectual processes which do not begin till long after these truths are wanted,

which may flag long before they can be dispensed with, and which may never have the opportunity of culture necessary for dealing with them at all. Every human creature needs them unspeakably, and it must not be left to the chances of one's intellectual training or no training to determine whether he shall have them or not. Happily, the intellect has no such jurisdiction over them as to entitle its doubts about them to any weight, nor does it give them any real weight.

What, then, is the point of our Saviour's charge in the text, "Be not of a doubtful mind." He had distinct reference to one of the primary truths of religion, and it applies to them all. What is the force of that charge? To what part of our nature does its appeal come home, and through what faculties or feelings can we render obedience to it? If he had meant to appeal to the understanding, he must have given permission to doubt, for that is the understanding's inalienable prerogative; and he would have used arguments to remove that doubt, and such as would have produced an affirmative solution of it, and precluded a negative one. But he used no argument, only a slight illustration, an incidental analogy. The appeal was to the believing sentiment, the trustful and pious instinct of the soul. Be not doubtful, but believing-as much as to say: You have in you and always had the implanted sense of a Power over you, above your own power and above all the powers of nature. You were made from the first capable of reverence, of worship, of trust, of prayer. You were made to look up: you have a feeling of dependence, a consciousness that you are not your own, that an unseen eye watches you and an unseen hand guides and protects you. Cherish

this blessed feeling. Keep it, give yourself up to it, repose in it. You know, whether from the glad experience or from the anxious yearnings of the heart, that it is the happiest and the noblest sentiment you are capable of, that with it you are strong and peaceful and that without it you are weak and distracted, that with it you have a father, without it you are a lost and forsaken orphan. Without it the world drifts away through chaos into night and confusion, and with it it is borne on in its Creator's arms through heavenly spaces to glorious issues. With it, you feel that you hold your rightful position, calm amid the storms of fortume, superior to the accidents of life, upborne through sorrow's night, cared for and upheld in life and in death. Be not doubtful. There are a thousand things you may doubt about, and not sink nor be disheartened; but doubt here, and you drift rudderless and aimless and hopeless; doubt here, and you have no refuge but either in animal oblivion and recklessness or dark despair. Be not doubtful. Keep hold of the blessed and priceless faith; let it lift you consciously to your place at the Father's side; let it put your hand into his hand to lead you; let it throw its cheerful light over all events; let it banish fears, and bring in brightest hopes; let it keep open a pathway for your submissive and confiding prayers to ascend continually, assured of reaching the ear of infinite love and pity. You are not made, you do feel it within your deepest being, you were not made to wander through existence homeless, hopeless, and lost and despairing. You were made for better things,to inherit a child's portion, to lean upon God, to walk amid the harmonies and beneficences of his providence, to feel his care, to be glad in

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his love. Any number of theological propositions about God or philosophical explanations about him, or particular forms of opinions about him, you may doubt. The understanding has a right to pronounce upon these; but the primary truth, the being and loving care of God, to doubt here is something more than doubt. It is no mere transitional stage in an intellectual process. It is a loss of the soul's primal endowments, a loss out of one's very being. A kind of doubt that was never produced by lack of proofs, and that no mere proofs will remove. It is blight and desolation of the very soul itself.

And, again, to apply the precept of the text to another of the primary truths of religion, the reality of moral distinctions, the reality of virtue in the world, the soul's capability for it, and its infinite beauty and immeasurable worth, to doubt on these points is worse than doubt. The in tellect alone is not capable of achieving so dreadful a ruin. When the faith is gone out of the heart, the intellect may come in with its after thoughts and its meddlesome pother about proofs and disproofs, and it is not much matter what it does when the faith is gone. The intellect, in its pride and conceit, may pretend that it has unsettled the whole system of moral belief; but it is only pretence. It never settled it nor unsettled it; it has no jurisdiction in the case. Through sin or neglect or some spiritual perversity or disease, that part of the soul which believes in goodness, and warms to it and aspires to it, as a portion of the very being and attributes of God within the soul, has got chilled and deadened. We call it doubt, as if it were some honest hesitation of the understanding. It is more that doubt, it is death. Be not doubtful here,

Christ charges us. Yield no respect to such doubt as that, but put it away, keep it off. To lose faith in goodness is to lose all. There is then no guidance for the life, there is no God in the heavens, there is no divine law over us, there is nothing to love or honor in our fellow-men, there is no brightness in the future, we can have no faith in ourselves, no single-hearted and noble aims in life, no sacred principles, no high aspirations, no disinterestedness, no power of self-sacrifice, no heroism of conduct, no brave endurance no perseverance in well-doing. Virtue is a sham, unselfishness a mocking pretence, honesty is but policy, and doubtful at that. We study moral appearances, and scout the idea of moral realities. The sublimest forces of our being are crippled; we can do nothing, be nothing, which we ourselves could for a moment respect. Here is something besides a mere pausing of the understanding upon a balance of conflicting evidence. The springs of our very life are broken, the fountains of our very being are dried up, the divine image all stricken out of us. Be not doubtful here, for such doubt is to die more than the body's death.

I have not enumerated or defined these primary truths, which are out of the province of the understanding and are not fit subjects of its doubting. I have only named two of the most comprehensive ones. One might ask if the divine character and authority of Christ is one of them. We are taught that faith in Christ is one of the highest and most essential things in religion. And he is an historical person. There are questions of fact about him, things to be believed or denied upon evidence; and, therefore, the understanding has a right to come in and decide about him, and the un

derstanding is liable to doubt, and has a right to doubt, about all matters properly within its sphere. Well, I must admit that the authority of Christ is not among the primal truths, not inborn, not a thing of universal experience, a subject of critical inquiry; and to doubt about him has not necessarily the fatal effect which attaches to all doubt concerning the primary truths. But, then, I must say also that, whoever attains to any spiritual knowledge of that wonderful being, and comes to see how he is in his life and words and heart the very embodiment of the primary truths of religion,-how he awakens and vitalizes them in every soul that comes in contact with him, and sees what an expression he is of the very divinity of truth and love; how he nourishes in every heart that touches him those primary beliefs and affections of piety and goodness which are the very bread of life, calls them into beautiful and happy activity, living by them himself, and breathing his own life abroad into the heart of the world, whoever sees and knows Christ thus, which is the only way of really seeing and knowing him to any purpose at all, will so associate him with all his own highest and dearest experiences of faith and hope, of virtue and love, that faith in him shall become by the association even as one of the primary faiths, even as the sum of them all, believing in him just as he believes in them, so as not to be able nor disposed to give him up to the cavils and criticisms of the understanding. The understanding will still have the right to examine the records of his life, and whatever evidence there may be that he did this or said that, and to pronounce upon the validity of proofs as to the facts of his outward history; but as to himself, his spiritual life, himself

as the impersonation of divine truth and love, as the soul's great brother and heavenly friend, as the quickener of its own spiritual life, as its light, its law, its hope and joy, the understanding has nothing to do with it in that view, nothing to prove or disprove about it. It cannot measure him; it could not set him up, it cannot pull him down. Its arguments and inquiries are misplaced. When the deep soul itself has thus known him, the captious understanding is not wanted to help, and is not permitted to hinder, but is warned off, and bidden to keep to its province of outside and secondary questions, and even to work these with reverence and self-distrust, lest it come too nigh to touching the mount of God, the sacred presence that is too great, too high and holy, for it to presume to deal with. Doctrines, evidences, opinions, criticisms, are for the intellect to discuss, to settle, to unsettle, and, of course, at the proper stages of inquiry to doubt about, when it sees cause. Here, it must have perfect liberty; and it will not abuse that liberty, if the soul has got a firm grasp of those primary truths which are associated with them, though laying so far beyond them, reaching so high above them, and resting on such different grounds. I can comprehend and respect the intellectual courage of some very religious men who deal so fearlessly with doctrines, opinions, and evidences, and do not feel that they in the least touch or shake the great primary truths of the heart or the gospel. And I can understand also, and respect, the intellectual awe and caution of other very religious persons who cling with tenacity to doctrines and arguments that could but ill bear a thorough intellectual investigation, cling to them, because they are so associated in their minds with

the primary truths, have got so inter twined with them to their minds that they shrink from touching them, or submitting them to an intellectual probe, lest somehow by the process the soul itself should get disturbed in its hold of its own great and primary faiths, which are its life and strength and only peace. We may call it timidity or superstition, but let us respect whatever means any man takes to preserve, to perfect, to guard or to purify the soul's great and vital truths, the primary and indispensable beliefs of the heart.

The practical question which our subject presents is this,-how to reestablish and confirm our confidence in the primary and essential truths of religion, and expel any fatal doubtfulness that may have gathered about them, how restore and perfect our faith in them. Not by seeking arguments and proofs, by discussion or research, or any such intellectual process. It is not at bottom an intellectual doubtfulness, and therefore no intellectual process of logic or learning will remove it.

Fall back directly upon those primary beliefs themselves, those simplest sentiments of piety and virtue. Accept them as belonging to you, as that better part of yourself, without which you cannot be your true self, but only the earthy dregs and cinders of yourself. Rest yourself upon them, because in them only you can find rest at all. Ask not why you should believe in God and virtue, in providence and goodness, but simply and directly believe them and trust them, because they are so beautiful and so happy and so necessary to you. Do not try to reason them out, but only look at them and see how real they are. Look into your own deep heart, and you shall find blessed traces of them among your gladdest instincts, your brightest

memories, your surest inspirations. Look into the face of Jesus Christ, and behold them shining with the lustre of perfected humanity, and with all the glory of the Godhead. Look upon the face of nature, and behold them reflected there. Look into human experience, and see what peace there is in believing, what darkness and forlornness there is in rejecting; see what a crown virtue wears, what an inner and supernal blessedness falls upon the true and pure, what peace descends in answer to the prayer of faith. Behold the superiority of a trusting heart and a good life, how they harmonize and complete man's being, how they raise it and adorn it and clothe it with nobleness, and give it sweet repose; see how they equalize all con. ditions, how they dignify and sanctify prosperity, how they sustain the soul's equanimity amid adversity and want; see how they give to a child the maturity of a sage or a saint, and how they give to sage or saint the simplicity of a child; see the submission and patience and hopefulness they bring into the sick-room, and how they wait upon the dying hour to make it an hour of serenity and triumph, and linger at the grave to make it green with blessed memories and blooming with immortal expectations. Oh, look! Oh, think!

and be not doubtful! Take these truths to your very heart, unquestioned, and then let all other things, whether of the world or the understanding go as they may, you are richer than the world could make you, and wiser than the mere understanding can conceiv. of. Take your stand immovable on God's love and the laws of goodness, because there alone you can stand, and possess yourself in tranquility and courage and contentment. Ask not reasons for praying, but pray. Ask