“If, as you suppose, it cannot be our duty to act in reference to any ‘historical religion’ because a satisfactory investigation is impossible to the mass of mankind, the argument may be retorted on your own theory.  You assert, indeed, that in relation to religion we have an internal ‘spiritual faculty’ which evades this difficulty; yet men persist in saying, in spite of you, that it is doubtful,—­1st, whether they have any such; 2d, whether, if there be one, it be not so debauched and sophisticated by other faculties, that they can no longer trust it implicitly; 3d, what is the amount of its genuine utterances; 4th, what that of its aberrations; 5th, whether it is not so dependent on development, education, and association, as to leave room enough for an auxiliary external revelation;—­on all which questions the generality of mankind are just as incapable of deciding, as about any historical question whatever.”

Here Fellowes was called out of the room.  Harrington, who had been glancing at the newspaper, exclaimed,—­“Talk about the conditions on which man is left to act indeed!  Only think of his gross ignorance and folly being left a prey to such quack advertisements as half fill this column.  Here empirics every day almost invite men to be immortal for the small charge of half a crown.  Here is a panacea for nearly every disease under heaven in the shape of some divine elixir, and, what is more, we know that thousands are gulled by it.  How satisfactory is that condition of the human intellect in which quack promises can be proffered with any plausible chance of success!”

I told him I thought the science of medicine would yield an argument against religious sceptics which they would find it very difficult to reply to.

“How so?”

“Ah! it is well masked; but I know you too well to allow me to doubt that you suspect what I am referring to.”

“Upon my word, I am all in the dark.”

“Is there not,” said I, “a close analogy between the condition of men in reference to the health of their bodies and the science by which they hope to conserve or restore it, and the health of their souls and the science by which they hope to conserve or restore that?  Has not God placed them in precisely the same difficulty and perplexity in both cases,—­nay, as I think, in greater in relation to medicine,—­and yet is not man most willing and eager to apply to its most problematic aid, imparted even by the most ignorant practitioners, rather than be without it altogether?  The possession which man holds most valuable in this world, and most men, alas! more valuable than aught in any other world,—­life itself,—­is at stake; it is subjected to a science, or rather an art, proverbially difficult in theory and uncertain in practice, about which there have been ten thousand varieties of opinion, —­whimsically corresponding to the diversity of sect, creed, and priesthood, on which sceptics like you lay so much