A lately deceased philosopher of Scotland, Sir W. Hamilton, seems to concur in the catholic notion of the contradiction of faith and reason. He lays down a certain new, strange, unproved, incredible principle, called "the law of the conditioned," that "the conceivable always lies between two contradictory extremes;" and then concludes as "the one true and only orthodox inference" that we must believe in the infinity of God, which by us cannot be comprehended or conceived. "Faith,――Belief,――is the organ, by which we apprehend what is beyond our knowledge." But how can this be correct? When we exercise _faith_ in God's testimony,――when we exercise _belief_ in his word,――when we receive the very truth, which he presents to our understanding or reason and brings to our knowledge,――do we not _know_ it? Do we thus apprehend any thing "beyond our knowledge?" When Christ prayed――"sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth;"――did he not refer to truth _known_? What God reveals must be revealed to our belief, to our reason. Although we pretend not to comprehend perfectly the attributes and ways of the infinite God; yet what he has disclosed we may know; and we may know the meaning of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of faith and unbelief, of reason and contradiction or absurdity. It cannot then be a right inference――if the author had such a meaning――that any doctrine concerning the nature of God may be true, although not _conceivable_, because God is _infinite_. God's scheme of mercy towards sinful man is accomplished by the wide-spread power and triumphs of Truth. But what are the Truths, that bear intimately on human welfare? Surely it is not a matter of indifference what is received for truth; men are not safe, because they think they are so. No bigoted despotism; no boasted liberalism; no banded relationships of interest or honor; no infidel companionship or self-applauses can convert error into truth or render it harmless. Whatever monstrous or astounding notions, whatever wild, fanatical, profligate, misleading doctrine may be sent forth, no glozing words can render it otherwise, than that error and falsehood are God's abhorrence and a delusion of the devil.