“Robinson Crusoe!” said I.

“Certainly,” he replied; “do you not remember that when he caught his man Friday, the ’intuitional consciousness’—­the ’insight’—­the ‘inward revelation’ of that worthy savage not being found quite so perfect as Mr. Parker would fancy, Robinson proceeds to indoctrinate him in the mysteries of theology?  Friday is much puzzled, as many more learned savages have been before him, to find that the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of God had made every thing good, and that good it would have continued had not been for the opposition of the Devil.  ‘Why God not kill Debbil?’ asks poor Friday.  On which says Robinson, ’Though I was a very old man, I found that I was but a young doctor in divinity.’  Ah! if all doctors in divinity had been equally candid, the treatises on that dread subject would not have been quite so voluminous; for we close them all alike with the unavailing question, ‘Why God not kill Debbil?’”

Observing this tendency to gravitate towards the abyss, I at last said to him, ’I think, if I were you, having decided that there is no religious truth to be found, I should dismiss the subject from my thoughts altogether.  Do as the Indian did, who struggled as long as he could to right his canoe when he found he was in the stream of Niagara; but, finding his efforts unavailing, sat himself down with his arms folded, and went down the falls without stirring a muscle.  Let us talk no more on the subject.  Why should you perplex yourself, as you apparently do, about a thing so hopeless to be found out as truth?  ‘What is truth?’ said Pilate; and, as Bacon says, ‘he would not wait for an answer.’  It was a question to which, most probably, he, like you, thought no answer could be given.  If I were you, I should do the same.  Why perplex yourself to no purpose?”

“I should answer,” said he, “as Solon did when asked why he grieved for his son, seeing all grief was unavailing.’  It is for that very reason that I grieve,’ was the reply.  And in like manner I dwell on the impossibility of discovering truth because it is impossible.”

I acknowledged that it was a sufficient reason, and that it went to account in some degree for a fact I had remarked in the few sceptics I had come across,—­genuine or otherwise,—­that they seemed less capable of reposing in their professed convictions than any one else:  it is of no avail, they say, to reason on such subjects; and yet they are perpetually reasoning!  They will neither rest themselves nor let any one else rest.  He confessed it, and said, “The state of mind is very much as you have described it; and you have described it so exactly, that I almost think you, my dear uncle, must know the heart of a sceptic, and have been one yourself some time or other!”