You cannot read the writings of Newman, Hooker, Pascal, and St. Augustine, without being strongly impressed with the presumption that they have a real apprehension of the things they profess to believe; and, since they do not justify in any other way the theory that they are lunatics, a right-minded reader is likewise disposed to think that what they have thus seen exists, and that his not having seen such things does not materially diminish that probability. And here it may be well to recur to the text of these remarks: “Man is not a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting animal.” All men properly so called--but a good many who walk upright on two legs cannot properly be so called--are seeing, feeling, and acting animals; but very few men, indeed, have as yet attained to be contemplating animals, though the act of contemplation exercised upon the highest objects is, according to all great philosophers, even pagan, the act for which he is created and in which his final perfection and felicity are attained. The act of real apprehension, as it is exerted by ordinary men, and even for the most part by men of extraordinary vigour of intellectual vision, is momentary, however permanent may be its effect upon their principles and lives. Men of vigorous apprehension look at the heavens of truth, as it were, through a powerful telescope, and see instantly as realities many living lights which are quite invisible to the common eye. But contemplation--a faculty rare in all times, but wellnigh unheard of in ours--is like the photographic plate which finds stars that no telescope can discover, by simply setting its passively expectant gaze in certain indicated directions so long and steadily that telescopically invisible bodies become apparent by accumulation of impression. Such men are prophets and apostles, whether canonical or not. It is by the instrumentality of such men that religions are established and upheld; and the term “verifiable religion” is a piece of mere nineteenth-century slang, when applied to the examination of dogma by such as have probably never had the remotest apprehension of any spiritual reality. Certain facts of history relating to religion may or may not be capable of “verification” to the multitude; but the dogmas which are the substance of a religion, can only be really apprehended--assuming them to be real and apprehensible--by the exceedingly few to whom the highest powers of contemplation, which are usually the accompaniments of equally extraordinary virtues, are accorded. The mass of mankind must receive and hold these things as they daily receive and hold a thousand other things--laws, customs, traditions, the grounds of common moralities, etc.--by faith; their real apprehension in such matters extending for the most part only to the discernment of the reasonableness of so receiving and holding them.