At first sight one is tempted to attribute this success to energy of faith on the part of these laborers in the cause, to the active and devoted perseverance of their zeal. Again a mistake! Not that human merit was without its share in the results; but even where the faith was thus propagated, the share that that faith itself had in the result was infinitely greater, from its own proper and inherent virtue, than any share of men. Incredulity and indifferentism may diffuse themselves and pretend to dominate; they leave unsolved the problems that lie in the depth of man's soul: they do not rid him of his perplexities, of instinct or of reflection, as to the world's creation and man's creation, the origin of good and evil, providence and fate, human liberty and human responsibility, man's immortality and his future state. {160} Instead of the denials and the doubts that had been thrown over these unescapable questions, those who applied themselves fully to rouse awakened Christianity, recalled the human soul to the memory of positive solutions of these questions; solutions in accordance with the traditions of their native land, in accordance with their habits as members of families, and in harmony with the recollections of early childhood; solutions often contested, never refuted; always recurring in the lapse of ages, and century after century! It was from the intrinsic and permanent value of the doctrines which they were preaching, and not from themselves, that the laborers in the work derived their force and their credit.