MANKIND are divided by nature into believers and unbelievers almost as distinctly as they are into males and females. It is the propensity of some minds to doubt, as it is of others to have faith, and while some immediately accept, with childlike confidence, whatever is told them, others as promptly question it and demand proof. That this is not the result of wilfulness, but a constitutional trait which asserts itself instinctively, is shown by its manifestation in matters of every-day occurrence. One man will be contented with barely being told, for example, that the weather is cold or rainy, while another will ask for particulars, such as, how cold it is, or how much it is raining, and what opportunities his informant had for knowing the fact he relates. One will read a piece of news in a single newspaper, and rely upon it as true, whereas another will insist on seeing several versions of it, and even if it be favorable to his wishes, will not accept it till he has canvassed it with more or less thoroughness, and come to some kind of a conclusion respecting it other than that derived from a first impression. Wall Street veterans say that a man is a "bear" or a "bull" in stocks, not by choice, but by necessity. He has either a natural disposition to trust or a natural disposition to distrust, and operates accordingly. We need only to watch the conduct of our friends and associates to discover that the distinction is of wide prevalence, and that it holds good in all the business of life. It is true that the majority of people are naturally trustful, and that the doubters constitute the minority. The fact that false witness is forbidden by Divine commandment, and that the telling of lies is visited with social reprobation, indicates this preponderance of belief over unbelief. Were most men disposed to doubt, it would not be so great an evil to tell them untruths. They would investigate for themselves and detect the attempted imposture. But as, on the contrary, they are prone to give credence, they must be protected against being deceived. Nevertheless, the unbelievers are sufficient in number for unbelief to be an important factor in human development.

The form of unbelief which has made itself most conspicuous in all ages is that which relates to matters of religion. Most people being, as we have said, believers by nature, accept without question the religious ideas presented to them by persons they have been taught to confide in, and as religion deals with supremely important topics of life, the dissenters from established opinions in regard to it would be noticeable, even if they did no more than dissent. When, in addition, they express their doubts by the voice and by the pen, as they are prone to do, and raise all sorts of troublesome questions for believers to answer, they become also objects of dislike. It is the wind blowing against the tide, and rough water is the result. By as much as the concerns of the soul and of eternal life surpass those of the body and this world, by so much does a disturbance of what are conceived to be truths essential to one's spiritual well-being produce a disagreeable impression. It has thus come to pass among Christians, as among Mohammedans and men of all other faiths, that when a person is said to be an unbeliever, it is commonly understood that he is an unbeliever in religion, and that when unbelief is spoken of, it means unbelief of accepted religious doctrines. The odium, likewise, in which both the men and the thing are held is based almost exclusively upon their antagonism to religion, scepticism upon other subjects being little regarded. But, if unbelief is a bad thing in religion, it is bad in everything else, and if in everything else it is not bad or is even useful, it is not necessarily injurious and may be useful in religion. Believers, it is to be feared, have lost sight of this truth, and, in their vivid perception of the mischiefs wrought by unbelief, have failed to acknowledge as they ought its redeeming qualities. These, as we shall presently see, are by no means inconsiderable, and should reconcile us to its existence, though they may not commend it to our esteem.

As to the assertion often made, that unbelief is not a merely intellectual habit, but results from moral perversity, and that, if not a sin in itself, it leads to sin in other respects, it is hardly necessary to refute it. It was once a favorite argument with divines and religious writers, but latterly they have almost given it up. Indeed, they are now busy rather in repelling the accusation brought by sceptics against them, that their own principles are immoral, and the cause of immorality in practice. So far as

experience can settle the question, it shows that the lives of Benjamin Franklin, John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, Theodore Parker, and other unbelievers are as little open to reproach as those of equally eminent champions of faith, while the revelations, of which we have had so many of late, proving that the profoundest religious feeling and the most decorous piety are not incompatible with pecuniary dishonesty, effectually dispose of the allegation that religion and morality are inseparable. As the Italian bravo on his way to commit a murder drops into the nearest church to implore the blessing of the Virgin Mary and the saints upon his undertaking, so the American church-member, in the midst of his embezzlements of money belonging to widows and orphans, does not intermit in the least either his family prayers or his attendance at public worship. It is not hypocrisy on the part of such men, but the simultaneous expression of two independent principles of their natures. The bravo assassinates and the dishonest trustee robs for pecuniary gain, and both engage in acts of devotion in obedience to their emotional impulses. They are none the less believers for being wicked, nor less wicked for believing. So a man may be upright in his conduct while lacking in religious faith, and neither will his integrity give him faith nor his want of faith destroy his integrity.

The precise functions of unbelief will best appear if we consider what would be the result of its suppression. Supposing that the state of affairs which many good people sigh for in regard to religion were to prevail both in regard to that and to all other subjects, and that there were no doubts, no questionings, no critical investigations, but a universal implicit acceptance of every assertion made by authorized teachers in every department of human knowledge? Would not the intellectual progress of the world come to a stand-still? If the scientific as well as the religious doctrines now held by the great majority of mankind could by some omnipotent decree be henceforth and forever shielded from objection and discussion, would not a stop be put to new discoveries? The Church of Rome did, indeed, once try the experiment, and succeeded in at least repressing the utterance of unbelief in what it had decided to be scientific as well as religious truth. It punished as a sin doubts of the Ptolemaic cosmogony as it did those of the inspiration of the Bible, and declared attacks upon the

Aristotelian philosophy to be attacks upon the foundations of faith and religion.* But to the extent that it accomplished its endeavors, it also produced a paralysis of the human intellect, and had it fully triumphed, stagnation and death would have overspread the intellectual world. Fortunately, unbelief was too strong to be thus silenced, and to its exertions we owe our present liberty. But the evil from which it delivered us then is the evil against which it guards us now, and a condemnation of it now as noxious or even as useless is ungratefully to deny its past benefits. More than this, unbelief is a conservative agency which prevents the spread of imposture and fanaticism. It has arrested the career of many an attempted fraud which would otherwise have triumphed. Without it Mormonism might have been as extensively received as Christianity, and Joanna Southcote had as many followers as Wesley. The vagaries of the Millerites might have taken their place by the side of the Thirty-nine Articles, and the wild dreams of Dr. Cumming have been received as sound expositions of prophecy. Unbelief submits to examination all these vain imaginings, and exposes their true character.

It is unquestionably vexatious to people who have made up their minds on any subject for others to come and suggest disquieting doubts, and what is more, to support those doubts by arguments which cannot be easily replied to. It is like being turned out of bed after one has settled down comfortably for a night's sleep. No wonder that in less civilized times such disturbers of the peace were treated with severity, and silenced by physical force; that the ancient Brahmans waged war with the innovating Buddhists, that the Jews stoned blasphemers to death, and that their priests crucified Christ, that Socrates was poisoned and Protagoras banished, and that the progress of Christianity during so many ages was marked with bloody persecutions of the enemies of orthodoxy. Even so late as the last century unbelief in religion was a political disability, and treated as a social crime, while the feelings with which many excellent people now regard such men as

In 1624 three students were censured by the Faculty of Theology at Paris, and banished by the Parliament from the city, for sustaining in their theses propositions "quæ ex professo contra doctrinam Aristoteles, omnium philosophorum sine controversia principis, communemque omnium Academicorum consensum et usum militabant, et non nihil periculi adversus fidei principia involvere videbantur."-EPINOIS, Procès de Galilée, p. xix.

Arnold, Huxley, Tyndall, and Darwin in England, and Draper, Fisk, and Abbott in this country, need only stimulus and opportunity to burst forth into flames like those of Smithfield and Madrid. They forget that they are possibly roused, not from a wholesome repose, but from a torpor that leads to death, and that the disturbance they resent may be healthful and life-giving. They fail to see, too, that the doctrines for which they are ready to contend so zealously are based upon a denial of opposing doctrines which were once defended with equal zeal, and that in religion as in science they are now enjoying the benefit of work done by the unbelievers of a former age.

In fact, it may be said that every advance which the world has made in religious enlightenment it owes to the efforts of men inspired by a sentiment of unbelief in the accepted doctrines of their time. The doubts of the Jewish populace in regard to the authority of the Scribes and Pharisees prepared the way for the teachings of Christ, and his disciples had to brave not so much popular sentiment, as the hostility of ecclesiastical magnates. Paul, in turn, assailed the cherished belief of the original twelve Apostles in regard to the obligations of the Mosaic law, and was nearly torn in pieces for it at Jerusalem by a mob of their partisans. The Roman Empire did not accept the gospel until after its philosophers, poets, and satirists had destroyed all reverence in the people for their ancient gods and goddesses, so that even the priests and augurs, when they met in the street, laughed at the traditional absurdities they continued to perform. The work, however, was not effectually done for several centuries. The historian Gibbon relates that when the Emperor Theodosius, in the year 389, sent his Christian soldiers to destroy the temple and statue of Serapis at Alexandria, they hesitated to undertake the task, fearing the vengeance of the god, and that when, finally, one of their number, bolder than the rest, mounted his colossal image with an axe, and struck off its head, they gave a sigh of relief that no earthquake followed, and that no thunderbolt fell from heaven. Indeed, they still feared that the annual fertilizing inundation of the Nile would be withheld as a punishment for the sacrilege, and the occurrence of that event as usual removed a great weight from their minds. Christianity, having been fully established, its corruptions were assailed in turn by unbelief, and the Protestant Reformation, which had its beginning