The demolition of credulity is, as I have said, a wholly desirable
and beneficial thing. Most intelligent people have found some
happiness in learning that the dealings of God--that is, the
creative and originative power behind the universe--are at all
events not whimsical, however unintelligible they may be. No one at
all events is now required to reconcile with his religious faith a
detailed belief in the Mosaic cosmogony, or to accept the fact that
a Hebrew prophet was enabled to summon bears from a wood to tear to
pieces some unhappy boys who found food for mirth in his personal
appearance. That is a pure gain. But side by side with this
entirely wholesome process, there are a good many people who have
thrown overboard, together with their credulity, a quality of a far
higher and nobler kind, which may be called faith. Men who have
seen many mysteries explained, and many dark riddles solved in
nature, have fallen into what is called materialism, from the
mistaken idea that the explanation of material phenomena will hold
good for the discernment of abstract phenomena.
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