(4.) That it is no matter what a man believes, provided his conduct is right; and that one mode of faith can no more affect the interests of society, or a man's own soul, than another; and that the grand question is, not what are a man's opinions on speculative matters, but what is his character.

(5.) It would probably be added, that faith stands in quite strong contrast with reason, and that to represent religion as depending on faith is to undervalue the rational nature that God has given us, and that it is in fact making credulity a virtue, and diminishing the respect which our Maker has taught us to show to our own rational powers.

I could perhaps make these objections appear stronger by expanding them, but I have not designedly diminished their force, or concealed the point of difficulty. It will be seen at once that they are capable of being made to be weighty objections, and that the public defenders of the Christian system are not at liberty to pass them by unnoticed, or to treat them as though they were worthy of no regard. As interested themselves in the questions of religion, as well as in relation to their office as guides of others, they are bound to meet them in a frank manner, and to inquire whether they can be removed.

II. We are conducted, then, to the second and main point to be considered-the reason why such prominence has been assigned to faith in the system of revealed religion.

I begin this part of my subject by observing, that a word, though susceptible of an easy and unobjectionable explanation, may by long usage, or by certain associations, have had certain ideas attached to it which may greatly injure its use in an argument. Instead of suggesting only what is essential in the meaning of the word, it may suggest, either with that or without it, certain other things which may greatly impair its force, and leave a very erroneous impression. Thus the word faith, when suggested, may have in many minds a near alliance to credulity; in the same minds, or in other minds, it may be understood as something in contradistinction to reason, as implying that faith is not based on reason, or would not be sustained by it; and when the word is used, there may be conveyed with it the idea that it is something wholly separate from reason, and that the thing in relation to which faith is exercised is something which could not be supported by reason. This was evidently the aspect in which the word was suggested to Mr. Hume's mind when he said, "Our most holy religion is founded on faith, Nor on reason.”

There will be some advantage, therefore, and no injustice in any way, in conducting the argument, in taking a word which

involves all that is essential in faith, without the danger to which I have referred. I propose, therefore, to make use of the word confidence; a word which expresses all that is essential in the idea of faith, and which is not liable to the disadvantage already referred to. Confidence, it is clear, may be founded on good and substantial reasons. Indeed, it cannot exist without something that is regarded as a valid reason in any particular case, for we always connect with that word the idea that there is good reason, in the instance to which it is applied, why confidence should exist. If a man has confidence in the ability of a mercantile house to meet its engagements, it is supposed to be because he has good reason for it. The same thing may be true indeed of faith, and should be in all true faith, but the word does not always suggest that idea. I propose, therefore, in illustrating the value and importance of faith, in a system of religion, to make use, in general, of the word confidence instead of the more usual word.

The question then is, What is the value of confidence in a community; or, in other words, Is there any such value to be attached to it as to justify the primacy and importance attributed to faith in the Bible? What important part does it perform in the world? What evils result from the want of it?

Faith, or confidence, if a virtue at all, or if of value at all, is a social or relative virtue. It is true that we sometimes speak of having confidence in ourselves; but it is under the influence of that common fiction of the mind by which we regard ourselves as two persons, or as having antagonist feelings and principles; as when we speak of the reason and the passions as in conflict, and struggling for the mastery, and identify ourselves with one of them as at war with the other, Rom. vii. 17-23. But when we speak of having confidence, with strict propriety, it is of confidence in another-another person, a government, a bank, a debtor. Faith, then, might be distinguished, if it were necessary to go further into an examination of this point, from many virtues which terminate on ourselves, and which pertain only to ourselves. The point of examination now is, its value in the relations which men sustain, or in social interests. All that I can say will be merely to vary a very simple idea, or to apply one thought to different things; but it will, I trust, conduct us to the conclusion which it is desirable to reach in order to confirm the statement in my text.*

* Some of the remarks and illustrations on the subject of faith in this discourse have been made substantially in a different connexion in a previous sermon in this volume, but they seem so appropriate to the design of this discourse that it was not found convenient to omit them.

(1.) I begin with a reference to the value of confidence in a family. It can hardly be necessary to do much more here than simply to refer to the subject. All of us feel that the welfare of a family depends wholly on this; and that if it were destroyed, happiness would at once flee from our dwellings. All the good order, the prosperity, the happiness of a family depends on the confidence that a husband and wife repose in each other; in the confidence that children have in their parents; and perhaps in a not less degree in the confidence which parents have in their children. Every hour that we live in these relations we are dependent on that confidence for our peace of mind; and in relation to our domestic comfort and order there is nothing that could be substituted for it. Every hour of happiness that any of us have had in the marriage relation has been identified with that, and at any moment our happiness would have been destroyed effectually if that had not existed. There could have been no substitute for it. No prosperity abroad; no success in business; no honours lavished upon us in the world; no sudden gains; no pleasures derived from literature, science, or the arts, could have been a substitute for this, or could have mitigated the pangs which would have existed in the bosom at the very idea of "infidelity," or a want of confidence, in this relation. The happiness and success of a parent depend wholly, too, on the confidence which his children repose in him. No parental government can answer the purpose where this is not secured; there can be no domestic peace where this is not found. It is not on force that we rely in governing our families and making them happy; it is in the confidence which our children shall have in our wisdom, our integrity, our ability to give them the advice which they need, our qualifications to govern in the little community of which we are the head. If that cannot be secured in a family, there is nothing else that can be permanently substituted in its place. And, as already remarked, perhaps to a not less degree is domestic happiness dependent on the measure of just confidence that we repose in our children. If we have no confidence that they will act rightly; if we cannot trust them out of our sight; if we feel when they go out of the door that they will visit some place of infamy, regardless of our commands, whatever else they may have, whether learning or talent, it is plain that peace will be a stranger to our bosoms, and that slumber will not visit our eyelids.

Now if these things be so, it will be seen that the most effective mischief which any man could do, or could desire to do, in a family, would be simply to destroy this mutual confidence, If I

had the power, and wished to strike the most deadly blow at the heart of a family, I should do nothing more. I should go and take away all the confidence of a husband in his wife, and of a wife in her husband, and fill their minds with distrust and jealousy—and by doing this I should take away all peace from their bosoms, and sleep from their pillows. Or I should go and destroy all confidence in the bosom of sons or daughters towards a father; and teach them to feel that he was not worthy of their respect or love-and I should thus introduce insubordination and disobedience into the most peaceful dwelling on earth. Or I should go and destroy all the confidence of a father in his sons or his daughters; and I should make him restless and sad whenever they were out of his sight; and I should fill his bosom with the keenest anguish at the feeling that all his hopes had been blasted, and I should transform all his cherished and happy prospects in regard to their future character into dark and gloomy forebodings, and I should so torment him by a simple want of confidence as to make him wish that neither he nor they had been born, and long for the hour when he should find rest from his mental tortures in the grave.

(2.) Let us apply this remark to the relations sustained in a commercial community. Let a man reflect but for one moment how much the prosperity of such a community depends on mutual confidence, and he cannot be insensible to its value and importance. Let confidence in a commercial house be shaken, and how many interests are affected by it at once! Let confidence in a bank be shaken, and there may not be an interest in that community which is not affected by it. As when the storm shakes an old oak that has stood for generations, the admiration of men, the far-distant fibres of the roots, fine and tender, that run under the ground hidden from human view, shall be torn and rent, so it is when confidence in such an institution is shaken. There are a thousand interests which you would not have supposed would have been affected, that feel the shock. For such a shock affects not merely the commercial world-the men whose business may be dependent on its stability. In that bank shall have been confided the little property of hundreds or thousands of widows and orphans. He who had had the ability to lay up what it was hoped would make old age or the day of sickness comfortable, had entrusted it there. The professional man that had saved from his hard earnings what he felt he should need when the infirmities of age should forbid his longer toil, had felt that he had made competent provision for declining years, and had deposited it there. The father who had a beloved daughter, for whom he would make some provision as an expression of his love, and who had sought to calm his own

mind when he reflected that he might be taken away, and be no longer able to be her protector and friend, had deposited what he meant for her there. When confidence fails in such an institution; when it reels, ready to fall; when it comes down a mass of ruins, and no one can tell where the millions entrusted to it are scattered, there are thousands and tens of thousands of hearts that are made to bleed, and a blow is struck that vibrates through a community, reaching remote points that you would not have supposed could be affected by such a shock.

To commercial men, it is needful only to advert to this point. Well do they know that the entire prosperity of the community depends on confidence, and that when that is gone, all is gone. To see this in its full force, all that would be necessary would be to recall to recollection past events in our own community, and in our own land. From the minds of those who then lived, and especially from the minds of the multitudes who were so deeply interested, those scenes will never pass away while life lasts. Con-fidence in banks, and commercial houses, and in the solvency of distant debtors, seemed almost universally to have failed, and the whole land was agitated and convulsed, not because we were poor, or because our soil had ceased to be fruitful, or our air was pestilential, or our resources had departed, or because "grim-visaged war" frowned upon us, but because confidence was gone.

The same remark might be made here which was made respecting the peace of a family. If I had the power, and were disposed to inflict the deepest evil on a community, I should do no more than destroy this universal confidence. I should go into the commercial world and breathe suspicions, and start rumours, and insinuate doubts, and circulate reports, and unsettle the confidence of one commercial house in another, and of one bank in another, and of one part of the country in another, until I produced universal distrust and just so far as I succeeded, I should spread universal ruin. No foreign war, no spreading pestilence, no change of the seasons, would produce deeper distress in this land; for what commercial operation is there that could be continued for a day, if confidence were gone?

(3.) Let us apply this remark to the intercourse of nations, and see if we can find an illustration of the value of confidence or faith there. Nations never have been entirely independent of each other; as society advances, they are becoming less and less so. They may be independent in their government and laws, and so far as any direct foreign interference is concerned; but they are so in no other sense. They are adjacent to each other, and the prosperity of one affects the prosperity of another; or