only that belief has a native and indestructible foothold in the universe, but that it is lawful sovereign of the senses, with free right to sway and subordinate them; and, secondly, that one chief root of materialism is found in a certain spiritual timidity, to which is due the assumption that the senses only may be trusted.

It is undeniable that the unanimous and perpetual testimony of the senses is in flat contradiction of that which faith affirms. The heart of man murmurs, "Immortality "; the senses cry loudly, "Mortality, mortality!" You see your friend ill, you see him dying, you see him dead. Dead utterly; his eye brightens not at your coming; to your greeting no smile, no gleam of intelligence, replies; you touch the hand that once warmed and quickened so to yours, and take only a chill that goes to your marrow; and then comes the grave, and the farewell even to these dumb effigies. It were uncandid not to admit that this is a testimony of terrible force, and only in blank defiance of it can immortality be affirmed.

The heart, again, says, "God." The senses say, "Earth, air, space; no God in sight."

The heart cries, "Justice is omnipotent." Experience points to African slavery, the horrors of the middle passage, the sale on the auction-block of maiden chastity to competing lust, and answers, "Omnipotent! Is it even potent?"

Faith says, "God is good." The senses and lower powers point to a world in pain, every creature suffering more or less, vast tribes of creatures made to live by prey, the lion lying in wait, the tiger feasting upon blood life-warm, the shark at its brutal raven, the swallows hunting the fly, the hawk stooping upon the swallow, the sportsman practising upon the hawk, point to all this, and cry, "Good! What then is goodness?"

Faith declares God to be one, and the world a pure unit. Experience takes you by the hand, leads you to the roar and horror of a battle-field, and asks, "The world a unit? No chasm, no division here?"

And thus every affirmation of the soul is made, must be made, right in the face of facts that are forever before our eyes, in flat contradiction of an experience that perpetually

surrounds and presses upon us like the atmosphere itself. Is there not, therefore, an overwhelming presumption against the truth of its speech?

We shall not answer, No. There is a presumption against the grand affirmations of faith which is apparently overwhelming. Testimony could not be stronger. The materialist and the moral atheist have an enormous argument on their side, an argument that bruises many and crushes some. They can club you with the entire physical experience of man. For every part and particle of man's physical experience, from the first day of history until now, has been saying, "No absolute life, no such thing as spirit; no presiding justice and goodness, no immortality: only vitality as a property of matter; only force and blank necessity; and after life, extinction." We concede then, fully, that, on the ground of man's sensuous experience, the argument for materialism and unbelief is apparently overwhelming. Nay, the concession shall be larger; we acknowledge even that the testimony is such as apparently to exclude all spiritual conceptions and make argument unnecessary. Is not that allowance enough?

But now we have a question to ask which derives force from every particle of this concession. How came man to believe? Where did faith come from? Right in the face, as we say, of universal experience, right in the face of his own senses, right in the face, too, of all that is immoral in his own desires, he asserts spirit, absolute justice, pure moral unity, nay, falls on his knees before it with adoration, with contrition, and with hope. Universally he does so. What does it mean? What brings about this defiance of the senses by the human race as a whole?

It does not mean that men are indisposed to confide in the testimony of their senses. They do confide in their senses almost infinitely. Let the most eloquent of orators try to convince mankind that stones fall upward instead of downward, that we have not the earth under our feet, that the sun does not shine nor grass grow, and see what success he will have. Men trust their senses, not too little, but too much. When any one says, "I saw it with my own eyes," there is an end of controversy; adverse argument is wasted on him.

We have, then, three facts to put together:-1. Man confides immeasurably in his own senses. 2. He has the total testimony of his senses against faith. 3. Spite of all this, he spontaneously, universally, believes. What shall we make of these three facts? It seems to our understanding that there is but one inference from them. Namely, that there is somewhat in man which believes inevitably, that there is an eye behind the eye, and an ear within the ear, which report other things.

Imagine a man who, while accustomed to sailing-vessels, had never seen nor heard of a steamboat. Suppose him standing by the bank of a river of powerful current, and seeing a propeller pushing steadily, rapidly, up stream. What would he infer? Why, if he were a superstitious man, he would attribute it to witchcraft, that is, to some frivolous or lawless force. If rational, on the contrary, he would say, "There is some force in this ship itself which pushes it forward, some normal and rightful force." He would know that she must feel the force of the current equally with any other like bulk; he would know that only power could carry her against it; and seeing that such power was not external, reason must assure him that it was internal, and none the less normal. So when we behold the human race, against all the Missouri tides of the senses, pushing steadily toward fountain-heads of life and truth, what remains for us but to say, in like manner, "There is some force in man which carries him on "? Now, if superstitious, we shall add, with the materialist, that this results only from some mere witchcraft in his nature, some gratuitous, meaningless force. If reasonable, on the contrary, we shall say, "All universal forces are normal forces," and shall as soon question the right of the sun to be in the heavens, as the right of belief to be in man's heart, seeing that it universally belongs to his heart.

Thus it is that the argument of the materialist all tells against himself. The stronger he makes it, the worse for his conclusion. "See," he cries with confidence, "what a mighty current of testimony there is setting against faith." "See," we answer, "faith, of its own force, steadily stemming and overcoming this tide; and the more strongly that current runs, the more is proven the self-supporting power of belief."

If, therefore, we consider the sum-total of human history, we may say that belief is a force as self-supporting and inevitable as gravitation. Looked at in this large way, it requires no help; it will take care of itself; it is not susceptible of defeat nor diminution. One age or century, one country or continent, may or may not have the perfect benefit of its power; nevertheless, in the largest aspect, that power is constant and victorious. Just so there may be cold seasons, or even successions of cold seasons, yet the power of the sun is perpetual, and, in the broadest view, invariable. A particular age or people may row with the great currents of the soul, or may row against them, and so may do much to decide the question of its own prosperity or misery; but these tides are not changed, and in the end command results. Yet to us, to our time, our land, it is of an importance almost infinite, that we put our force and turn our faces in the right direction. Therefore it is important that we should come at the truth of this controversy.

The force of man's tendency to belief, which is indicated by its ability to set aside the clear and constant impressions of the senses, will be the better appreciated upon reflecting that these senses habitually receive much more credit than they deserve. Men think them surer in their action than they really are. To one eye the full moon is of the size of a silver dollar; to another, larger than the largest coach-wheel; but not the less does every one say, "I believe my own eyes." Whoever has much attended courts of law, and listened to evidence there, will have often remarked how differently the same simple transaction will be seen and reported by different spectators; yet with none the less confidence does each say, "I believe my own eyes."

Nor does this occur by any mere chance; there is in it significance and purpose. It is the business of the senses, when left to themselves or imperfectly commanded, to be defective in their action; because they were never designed for independent action, but for dependence and subordination. It is the business, on the other hand, of the higher faculties, to modify, and often reverse, their impressions. Precisely in this power to modify, regulate, and overrule them does science

differ from ignorance. Could the senses receive of anything a stronger impression than they constantly have, that the earth is stationary? Could they oppose to any statement a flatter contradiction than they do, and must, to the fact-now familiar to us all that the very city in which we dwell is flying forward in two directions at rates of velocity that confound the speed of railroad trains with the creeping of snails and mud-worms? To a savage, sharper-eyed than any

philosopher, nothing could be less credible than that, for example, one equal factor of quartz rock is air, the vitalizing element in the air we inhale; that diamond is of the same material as charcoal, and the ruby and sapphire of the same with the main constituent of common clay; that one fifth part, by weight, of the rock gypsum is water; that water itself is made up of two invisible gases; that one of these is probably a metal, as truly as iron or platinum; that in the visible universe there is no up nor down, no rising nor falling; that light, heat, and sound are all but forms of motion; that light is dark, and sound silent, until, through the optic and auditory nerves, they come into communication with their appropriate provinces in the brain, and that here in the brain they first become what we know as light and sound. The savage believes his own eyes, and therefore, if you tell him such things, does not believe you.

The eyes are admirable servants, provided one knows how to make them serviceable, provided one can put upon their statements the lordly interpretations of intellect; but whoever confides in them literally will be made beyond measure their fool. They are indeed eye-servants. Set over them the intellected genius of a Kepler or Newton, of a Linnæus or Thoreau, and they become capable of inestimable industries; leave them to themselves, and they prove, if not idlers, yet enormous liars. Plunge a straight stick obliquely into water, and the eyes will assure you, upon oath, that it is crooked. Put a spider's-web near enough, and the eye will pronounce it of the size of a ship's mainmast. Put a world ten thousand times larger than ours far enough off, say to the distance of Arcturus or the north star, and the eye will swear that it is less in size than the flame of a tallow-candle. Yet all the world goes on saying, "I believe my own eyes."