that much as I have always desired to be able to pray, I cannot will the attempt.  To justify myself for what my better judgement has often seen to be essentially irrational, I have ever made sundry excuses.  The chief of them has run thus.  Even supposing Christianity true, and even supposing that after having so far sacrificed my reason to my desire as to have satisfied the supposed conditions to obtaining ‘grace,’ or direct illumination from God,—­even then would not my reason turn round and revenge herself upon me?  For surely even then my habitual scepticism would make me say to myself—­’this is all very sublime and very comforting; but what evidence have you to give me that the whole business is anything more than self-delusion?  The wish was probably father to the thought, and you might much better have performed your “act of will” by going in for a course of Indian hemp.’  Of course a Christian would answer to this that the internal light would not admit of such doubt, any more than seeing the sun does—­that God knows us well enough to prevent that, &c., and also that it is unreasonable not to try an experiment lest the result should prove too good to be credible, and so on.  And I do not dispute that the Christian would be justified in so answering, but I only adduce the matter as an illustration of the difficulty which is experienced in conforming to all the conditions of attaining to Christian faith—­even supposing it to be sound.  Others have doubtless other difficulties, but mine is chiefly, I think, that of an undue regard to reason, as against heart and will—­undue, I mean, if so it be that Christianity is true, and the conditions to faith in it have been of divine ordination.

This influence of will on belief, even in matters secular, is the more pronounced the further removed these matters may be from demonstration (as already remarked); but this is most of all the case where our personal interests are affected—­whether these be material or intellectual, such as credit for consistency, &c.  See, for example, how closely, in the respects we are considering, political beliefs resemble religious.  Unless the points of difference are such that truth is virtually demonstrable on one side, so that adhesion to the opposite is due to conscious sacrifice of integrity to expediency, we always find that party-spectacles so colour the view as to leave reason at the mercy of will, custom, interest, and all the other circumstances which similarly operate on religious beliefs.  It seems to make but little difference in either case what level of general education, mental power, special training, &c., is brought to bear upon the question under judgement.  From the Premier to the peasant we find the same difference of opinion in politics as we do in religion.  And in each case the explanation is the same.  Beliefs are so little dependent on reason alone that in such regions of thought—­i.e. where personal interests are affected and the evidences of truth are not in their nature demonstrable—­it really seems as if reason ceases to be a judge of evidence or guide to truth, and becomes a mere advocate of opinion already formed on quite other grounds.  Now these other grounds are, as we have seen, mainly the accidents of habit or custom, wish being father to the thought, &c.