Reader, now that it is suggested to you, does it not seem in the highest degree improbable, that the most important truths which can pertain to man, truths which do not concern primarily the affairs of this life, but of his most exalted life, the life of the spiritual person as the companion of its Creator, should be based upon an inferior, less satisfactory, and less adequate foundation of knowledge, than those of our childhood's studies, of the arithmetic and the algebra? The boy who cons the first pages of his arithmetical text-book, soon learns what he knows to be _self-evident_ truths. He who should offer to _prove_ the truth of the multiplication-table, would only expose himself to ridicule. When the boy has attained to youth, and advanced in his studies, the pages of the algebra and geometry are laid before him, and he finds new and higher orders of self-evident truths. Would any evidence, any argument, strengthen his conviction of the validity of the axioms? Yea, rather, if one should begin to offer arguments, would he not instinctively and rightfully feel that the confession was thereby tacitly made, that self-evidence was not satisfactory; and would he not, finding his spontaneous impulse, and his education, so contradictory, be _liable_ to fall into complete skepticism? If now there be this spontaneous, yea, abiding, yea, unalterable, yea, universal conviction respecting matters of subordinate importance, can it be possible,--I repeat the question, for it seems to carry with it irresistibly its own and the decisive answer,--can it be possible that the decisions of questions of the highest moment, that the knowledge of the principles of our moral being and of the moral government to which we are amenable, and most of all of the Governor who is at once Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge, is not based on at least equally spontaneous, yea, abiding, yea, unalterable, yea, universal convictions? And when the teacher seemingly, and may it not with truth be said _actually_, distrusting the reliability of such a conviction, goes about to bolster up his belief, and the belief of his pupil, in the existence of God, and thereto rakes together, with painstaking labor, many sticks and straws of evidence, instead of looking up to the truth which shines directly down upon him with steady ineffable effulgence, is it at all strange that the sharper-eyed pupil, keenly appreciating the contradiction between his spontaneous conviction and his teaching, should become uncertain which to follow, a doubter, and finally a confirmed skeptic? If, then, it is incredible that the fundamental principles of man's moral nature--that to which all the other elements of his being are subordinate, and for which they were created--are established on inferior grounds, and those less satisfactory than the grounds of other principles; and if, on the other hand, the conviction is irresistible, that they are established on