that if any man makes it a condition of his assent to truth of any kind, that it must first be demonstrated to him as clear as that two and two make four; it is clear that is if there be any class of truths which cannot be so proved as that two and two make four, the man who makes that proof or demonstration a condition of his assent, must always be in doubt about those truths, or that class of truths; he must always in respect of them be a sceptic or doubter. Again, one step further, it is clear that religion or Christianity is a truth, or class of truths that cannot be demonstrated scientifically. We cannot prove that there is a God, in the same way that we can prove that two and two make four. We cannot do this, because the idea of God is that he is invisible to us. The first utterance of religion is this: I believe in what I cannot see, I believe in an invisible God. Clearly he that says, I don’t believe anything I do not see, must be a sceptic or doubter about the truth of religion; and therefore it comes to pass, that though religion is by no means the only subject, or the only collection of truths that cannot be demonstrated, it is the principal one, and it has come to pass that though there are sceptics on other subjects, yet for this reason a sceptic is understood to be a man who doubts about religious subjects; a man who will not believe all the truths of Christianity, because they cannot be demonstrated to him in the way he thinks they should be demonstrated. You see now what a sceptic is, and what scepticism, is. By the word sceptic we mean a disbeliever in the truths of religion. A man may disbelieve some of the truths of religion and not be a sceptic. A Jew does not believe in Christianity, but he is not a sceptic. It is because he believes in Moses that he does not believe in Christ. We don’t call the Pantheists or the Deists sceptics, because they have a fixed belief. Some of their beliefs I think monstrous; they make a greater demand on faith than those do who believe in religion. I think the man who says there is no God must believe more contradictions than the man who says there is a God. He has a perfectly monstrous creed, but it is a creed. He is not so much a disbeliever as a misbeliever, for he believes in something else than God. Again, we don’t call a doubter a sceptic; a sceptic is a doubter, but the doubter is not necessarily a sceptic. A man may doubt of the truths of religion, only because he has not had evidence of the proper kind. A sceptic asks for evidence of an unreasonable kind. A man may doubt the truth of any assertion in history; he may think that all the historians or witnesses of the facts are untruthful or ill informed, I should not call that man a sceptic; but if a man said, I don’t believe the facts