Scepticism has no law, gives no advice, and has nothing in it about the characters of men. It does not say that a man shall, or shall not, have a good character; that he shall or shall not have a bad character. It contains no such words and has no such idea, or keeps up no such distinctions as good and bad. It says nothing about love and hatred, revenge and pity, covetousness and benevolence, vice and virtue, happiness and misery. It contains not one sentence touching all the relations in life, providing nothing for individuals, families or nations. It consists of one negative principle, viz: _The denial of the truth of the Christian religion_. Any man can see that there is no law in this. If they could succeed in this denial, and show beyond all contradiction that christianity is not true, it amounts to nothing. It is no law, and accomplishes nothing in any way, only to bring christians upon a level with them—with _precisely nothing_. Scepticism has no rewards for the good. It promises nothing in this world nor that which is to come. It holds out no rewards, no inducements of any kind for the good, in time or eternity! Scepticism has no punishments for the bad, here nor hereafter. It contains no punishments for evil doers—the profligate, dissipated, and corrupt; thieves, robbers and murderers. It knows nothing of crimes or punishments for crimes, of any grade or atrocity. Scepticism has no reformatory power. A denial, or a train of denials, even denials of error, can never restrain sinners nor reform men. The influence is simply negative. In the very nature of things, it cannot act positively. Denials or negatives require nothing, give nothing, and, as a matter of course, can produce no reformation. It is a negative system, if we may be allowed to call it a _system_ at all, and in the very nature of things, its influence must be negative. It is like cold, which is simply the absence of heat; for the suffering, in the absence of heat, is from want of heat. Scepticism is simply the absence of the heat of christianity. Darkness is merely the absence of light, or it is the negative of light, else it and light could exist at the same time, in the same place. In precisely the same way, scepticism is the absence of gospel light, or faith. The soul without faith is empty, cold, dark, and hungry, suffering and perishing, for light, heat and food. Scepticism is no system, not a reality, substance or entity of any kind, but the absence of all these. To speak in general terms of faith, both christian faith and all other faith, the absence of it, would be the absence by far of the greater part of all we know, or that may be known by man. There is nothing more certain than that a man who knows much, must believe much. Scepticism is not the possession of reformatory principles, but simply the absence of them. There is nothing that a man can be more conscious of, than that scepticism never did, and never can, make a man better.