Two great blunders have been committed by faith-dealers: First, in assuming that belief is of the nature of a coat, which can be put on and off at pleasure,--i.e., that a man can believe what he pleases or wishes to believe. The second is, that knowledge and belief are synonymous terms, which is very far from being true. Knowledge begins where faith and belief end. Belief is that uncertain state of the mind which is experienced in the absence of knowledge; and, when that knowledge is obtained, the belief may prove to have been entirely erroneous. Belief implies _uncertainty_; knowledge implies _certainty_. There is this wide difference between them. We believe a thing when we do not know whether it is so or not; consequently the belief may be true or false. How egregious, then, the blunder of the orthodox world in condemning for disbelief! Belief, then, is a state of guessing. We will illustrate the position of orthodox Christendom: A boy throws up a copper coin, and cries, "Heads, or tails?" A by-stander, believing from its construction that "heads" will come up, cries out, "Heads!" Now, according to the logic of the orthodox, if he guesses wrong, he should be damned eternally for it. When you say to a man, "You shall believe this, or you shall believe that," you bind his soul in chains, and reverse the wheels of his progress, and push him toward the "dark ages." The fear that it would be a sin to doubt, causes religious ignorance; and a man will never abandon his religious errors and superstitions while he fears to doubt their truth. A man's belief and creed grow shorter as his knowledge increases. And the time is not far distant when philosophers and men of science will have no religious belief: all will be knowledge. It can be seen from the above exposition, that it is folly and consummate ignorance to attach so much importance to religious belief, inasmuch as it is impossible to know whether it is right or wrong. As the doctrine that belief is a virtue, and unbelief a crime has inundated the world with persecution, misery, and blood, it is time to abandon it. Those Christians who assume that belief is under the control of the will can settle the matter by trying the following experiment upon themselves: Let them try to believe, for only five minutes, that Mahomet was a true prophet, and Jesus Christ was an impostor. If they can do this, it will settle the question, and prove that man is responsible for his belief: otherwise he is not.