As even Saints may suffer from imaginations in which they have no part, so the shreds and tatters of former controversies, and the litter of an argumentative habit, may beset and obstruct the intellect,—questions which have been solved without their solutions, chains of reasoning with missing links, difficulties which have their roots in the nature of things, and which are necessarily left behind in a philosophical inquiry because they cannot be removed, and which call for the exercise of good sense and for strength of will to put them down with a high hand, as irrational or preposterous. Whence comes evil? why are we created without our consent? how can the Supreme Being have no beginning? how can He need skill, if He is omnipotent? if He is omnipotent, why does He permit suffering? If He permits suffering, how is He all-loving? if He is all-loving, how can He be just? if He is infinite, what has He to do with the finite? how can the temporary be decisive of the eternal?—these, and a host of like questions, must arise in every thoughtful mind, and, after the best use of reason, must be deliberately put aside, as beyond reason, as (so to speak) no-thoroughfares, which, having no outlet themselves, have no legitimate power to divert us from the King’s highway, and to hinder the direct course of religious inquiry from reaching its destination. A serious obstruction, however, they will be now and then to particular minds, enfeebling the faith which they cannot destroy,—being parallel to the uncomfortable, associations with which sometimes we regard one whom we have fallen-in with, acquaintance or stranger, arising from some chance word, look, or action of his which we have witnessed, and which prejudices him in our imagination, though we are angry with ourselves that it should do so. Again, when, in confidence of our own certitude, and with a view to philosophical fairness, we have attempted successfully to throw ourselves out of our habits of belief into a simply dispassionate frame of mind, then vague antecedent improbabilities, or what seem to us as such,—merely what is strange or marvellous in certain truths, merely the fact that things happen in one way and not in another, when they must happen in some way,—may disturb us, as suggesting to us, “Is it possible? who would have thought it! what a coincidence!” without really touching the deep assent of our whole intellectual being to the object, whatever it be, thus irrationally assailed. Thus we may wonder at the Divine Mercy of the Incarnation, till we grow startled at it, and ask why the earth has so special a theological history, or why we are Christians and others not, or how God can really exert a particular governance, since He does not punish such sinners as we are, thus seeming to doubt His power or His equity, though in truth we are not doubting at all.