I have thus endeavoured (with solicited help of Heaven) to place before
the world anew a few old truths: truths inestimably precious. Remember,
they cannot have lost by any such advocacy as is contained in the idea
of their being shown antecedently probable; for this idea affects not at
all the fact of their existence; the thing is; whether probable or not;
there is, in esse, an ornithorhyncus; its posse is drowned in esse:
there exists no doubt of it: evidence, whether of senses physical, or of
considerations moral, puts the circumstance beyond the sphere of
disputation. But such truths as we have spoken of do, nevertheless, gain
something as to--not their merits, these are all their own
substantially; nor their positive proofs, these are adjectives properly
attendant on them, but as to--their acceptability among the incredulous
of men; they gain, I say, even by such poor pleading as mine, from being
shown anteriorly probable. Take an illustration in the case of that
strange and anomalous creature mentioned just above. Its habitat is in a
land where plums grow with the stones outside, where aboriginal dogs
have never been heard to bark, where birds are found covered with hair,
and where mammals jump about like frogs! If these are shown to be
literal facts, the mind is thereby well prepared for any animal
monstrosity: and it staggers not in unbelief (on evidence of honest
travellers) even when informed of a creature with a duck's bill and a
beaver's body: it really amounted in Australia to an antecedent
probability.
Carry this out to matters not a quarter so incredible, ye thinkers, ye
free-thinkers; neither be abashed at being named as thinking freely:
were not those Bereans more noble in that they searched to see? For my
humble part, I do commend you for it: treacherous is the hand that roots
up the inalienable right of private judgment; the foundation-stone of
Protestantism, the great prerogative of reason, the key-note of
conscience, the sole vindex of a man's responsibility: evil and false is
the so-called reverential wisdom which lays down in place of the truth
that each man's conscience is a law unto himself, the tyranny of other
men's authority. Cheap and easy and perilled is the faith, which clings
to the skirt of others; which leans upon the broken staff of
priestcraft, until those poisoned splinters pierce the hand.
Prove all things; holding fast that which is good: good to thine own
reasonable conscience, if unwarped by casuistries, and unblinded by
licentiousness. Prove all things, if you can, "from the egg to the
apple:" he is a poor builder of his creed, who takes one brick on
credit. Be able, as you can be, (if only you are willing so far to be
wisely inconsistent, as to bend the stubborn knee betimes, and though
with feeble glance to look to heaven, and though with stammering tongue
to pray for aid,) be able, as it is thy right, O man of God--to give a
Reason for the faith that is in thee.