The church is not bound to the technicalities of argument in this contest. It has the perfect right to say, and say logically, that something must rest on faith—that there must be something in the heart or soul before conviction can be made perfect. Just as we cannot impress with the ecstasies and transports of earthly love a man who has never loved, or paint a rainbow to a man who has never seen. And yet the time has passed when religion can dismiss the skeptic with a shriek or a sneer. I read one little book a year ago, gentle, firm, decisive; a book that demonstrated the necessity and existence of the Supreme Being, as clearly and as closely as a mathematical proposition was worked out. But the strength of the church is, after all, the high-minded consistency of its members; the warmth and earnestness of its evangelism; the purity and gentleness of its apostles. If the creeds are put at peace, and every man who wears the Christian armor will go forth to plead the cause of the meek and lowly Nazarene, whose love steals into the heart of man as the balm of flowers into the pulses of a summer evening—then we shall see the hosts of doubt and skepticism put to rout.
Of course I have no business to write all this. It is the province of the preachers to talk of these things, and many no doubt will resent as impertinent even the suggestion of a worldling. And yet it seems so sure to me that in the swift and silent marshaling of the hosts of unbelief and irreligion there is presaged the supremest test that the faith of Christians has ever undergone, that I felt impelled to write. There are men, outside of the active workers of the church, who have all reverence for its institutions and love for its leaders; whose hearts are stirred now and then by a faith caught at a mother’s knee, or the memory of some rapt and happy moment; who want to live, if not in the fold of the chosen, at least in the shadow of the Christian sentiment, and among the people dominated by Christian faith; and who hope to die at last, in the same trust and peace that moved the dying Shakespeare—wisest, sweetest mind ever clothed in mortal flesh—when he said: “I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting.”
ON THE OCEAN WAVE.
An Amateur’s Experience on a Steamship.
A VERY TALL STORY.—THE FIRST IMPRESSIONS.—A SIDE VIEW OF SEA-SICKNESS.—THE SIGHT OF THE OCEAN.—LAND AT LAST AND GLAD OF IT.
[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE COURIER.]