However much we may labour, we can only arrive at an inner conviction, not at objective certainty.  All the glosses and asseverations in the world cannot carry us an inch beyond the due weight of the evidence vouchsafed to us.  An honest and brave mind will accept manfully this condition of things, and not seek for infallibility where it can find none.  It will adopt as its motto that noble saying of Bishop Butler—­noble, because so unflinchingly true, though opposed to a sentimental optimism—­’Probability is the very guide of life.’

With probabilities we have to deal, in the intellectual sphere.  But, when once this is thoroughly and honestly recognised, even a comparatively small balance of probability comes to have as much moral weight as the most loudly vaunted certainty.  And meantime, apart from and beneath the strife of tongues, there is the still small voice which whispers to a man and bids him, in no superstitious sense but with the gravity and humility which befits a Christian, to ’work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.’

[ENDNOTES]

[2:1] With regard to the references in vol. i. p. 259, n. 1, I had already observed, before the appearance of the preface to the sixth edition, that they were really intended to apply to the first part of the sentence annotated rather than the second.  Still, as there is only one reference out of nine that really supports the proposition in immediate connection with which the references are made, the reader would be very apt to carry away a mistaken impression.  The same must be said of the set of references defended on p. xl. sqq. of the new preface.  The expressions used do not accurately represent the state of the facts.  It is not careful writing, and I am afraid it must be said that the prejudice of the author has determined the side which the expression leans.  But how difficult is it to make words express all the due shades and qualifications of meaning—­how difficult especially for a mind that seems to be naturally distinguished by force rather than by exactness and delicacy of observation!  We have all ‘les defauts de nos qualites.’

[10:1] Much harm has been done by rashly pressing human metaphors and analogies; such as, that Revelation is a message from God and therefore must be infallible, &c.  This is just the sort of argument that the Deists used in the last century, insisting that a revelation, properly so called, must be presented with conclusive proofs, must be universal, must be complete, and drawing the conclusion that Christianity is not such a revelation.  This kind of reasoning has received its sentence once for all from Bishop Butler.  We have nothing to do with what must be (of which we are, by the nature of the case, incompetent judges), but simply with what is.

[18:1] Cf.  Westcott, Canon, p. 152, n. 2 (3rd ed. 1870).

[18:2] See Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 60; also Credner, Beitraege, ii. 66 (’certainly’ from St. Paul).