This certitude and this evidence are often called moral; a word which I avoid, as having a very vague meaning; but using it here for once, I observe that moral evidence and moral certitude are all that we can attain, not only in the case of ethical and spiritual subjects, such as religion, but of terrestrial and cosmical questions also. So far, physical Astronomy and Revelation stand on the same footing. Vince, in his treatise on Astronomy, does but use the language of philosophical sobriety, when, after speaking of the proofs of the earth’s rotatory motion, he says, “When these reasons, all upon different principles, are considered, they amount to a proof of the earth’s rotation about its axis, which is as satisfactory to the mind as the most direct demonstration could be;” or, as he had said just before, “the mind rests equally satisfied, as if the matter was strictly proved.(20)” That is, first there is no demonstration that the earth rotates; next there is a cluster of “reasons on _different_ principles,” that is, independent probabilities in cumulation; thirdly, these “_amount_ to a proof,” and “the mind” feels “_as if_ the matter was strictly proved,” that is, there is the equivalent of proof; lastly, “the mind rests _satisfied_,” that is, it is certain on the point. And though evidence of the fact is now obtained which was not known fifty years ago, that evidence on the whole has not changed its character. Compare with this avowal the language of Butler, when discussing the proof of Revelation. “Probable proofs,” he says, “by being added, not only increase the evidence, but multiply it. The truth of our religion, like the truth of common matters, is to be judged by the whole evidence taken together ... in like manner as, if in any common case numerous events acknowledged were to be alleged in proof of any other event disputed, the truth of the disputed event would be proved, not only if any one of the acknowledged ones did of itself clearly imply it, but though no one of them singly did so, if the whole of the acknowledged events taken together could not in reason be supposed to have happened, unless the disputed one were true.(21)” Here, as in Astronomy, is the same absence of demonstration of the thesis, the same cumulating and converging indications of it, the same indirectness in the proof, as being _per impossibile_, the same recognition nevertheless that the conclusion is not only probable, but true. One other characteristic of the argumentative process is given, which is unnecessary in a subject-matter so clear and simple as astronomical science, viz. the moral state of the parties inquiring or disputing. They must be “as much in earnest about religion, as about their temporal affairs, capable of being convinced, on real evidence, that there is a God who governs the world, and feel themselves to be of a moral nature and accountable creatures.(22)”