the _mira_ for the _miracula_. _MS._ DOUBTS There is certainly no happier life than a life of simple faith; of literal acceptance, of rosy dreams. We must all grant that, if it were possible, nothing would be more perfect. I gladly acknowledge that some of the happiest, and also some of the best men and women I have known, were those who would have shrunk with horror from questioning a single letter of the Bible, or doubting that a serpent actually spoke to Eve, and an ass to Balaam. But can we prevent the light of the sun and the noises of the street from waking the happy child from his heavenly dreams? Nay, is it not our duty to wake the child, when the time has come that he must be up and doing, and take his share in the toils of the day? And is it not well for those who for the first time open their eyes and look around, that they should see by their side some who have woke before them, who understand their inquiring looks, and can answer their timid questions and tell them in the simple-hearted language of the old poet: 'There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.' _Gifford Lectures, III._ There is an atheism which is unto death, there is another atheism which is the life-blood of all true faith. It is the power of giving up what, in our best, our most honest, moments, we know to be no longer true; it is the readiness to replace the less perfect, however dear, however sacred it may have been to us, by the more perfect, however much it may be detested, as yet, by the world. It is the true self-surrender, the true self-sacrifice, the truest trust in truth, the truest faith. Without that atheism religion would long ago have become a petrified hypocrisy; without that atheism no new religion, no reform, no reformation, no resuscitation would ever have been possible; without that atheism no new life is possible for any one of us. _Hibbert Lectures._ How many men in all countries and all ages have been called atheists, not because they denied that there existed anything beyond the visible and the finite, or because they declared that the world, such as it was, could be explained without a cause, without a purpose, without a God, but often because they differed only from the traditional conception of the Deity prevalent at the time, and were yearning after a higher conception of God than what they had learnt in their childhood. _Hibbert Lectures._ There are moments in our life when those who seek most earnestly after God think they are forsaken of God; when they hardly venture to ask themselves, Do I then believe in God, or do I not? Let them not despair, and let us not judge harshly of them; their despair may be better than many creeds.... Honest doubt is the deepest spring of honest faith; only he who has lost can find. _Hibbert Lectures._