Nor is it correct to say that 'when religious differences come to be, and are regarded as, mere differences of opinion, it is because the controversy is really decided in the sceptical sense.' Those who agree with the present writer, for example, are not sceptics. They positively, absolutely, and without reserve, reject as false the whole system of objective propositions which make up the popular belief of the day, in one and all of its theological expressions. They look upon that system as mischievous in its consequences to society, for many reasons,--among others because it tends to divert and misdirect the most energetic faculties of human nature. This, however, does not make them suspect the motives or the habitual morality of those who remain in the creed in which they were nurtured. The difference is a difference of opinion, as purely as if we refused to accept the undulatory theory of light; and we treat it as such. Then reverse this. Why is it any more impossible for those who remain in the theological stage, who are not in the smallest degree sceptical, who in their heart of hearts embrace without a shadow of misgiving all the mysteries of the faith, why is it any more impossible for them than for us, whose convictions are as strong as theirs, to treat the most radical dissidence as that and nothing other or worse? Logically, it perhaps might not be hard to convict them of inconsistency, but then, as has been so often said, inconsistency is a totally different thing from insincerity, or doubting adherence, or silent scepticism. The beliefs of an ordinary man are a complex structure of very subtle materials, all compacted into a whole, not by logic, but by lack of logic; not by syllogism or sorites, but by the vague.