“This is the extreme penalty of the heroic sceptical resolve in strong and constant minds; commonly those who would measure man’s large scope by the gauge of their own ability and experience fall into such idiosyncrasy as is the fruitful mother of sects, abortive social schemes, and all the various brood of dwarfed life; but, for most men, the pressure of life itself, which compels them, like Descartes, doubting the world, to live as if it were real, corrects their original method of independence.  They find that to use authority is the better part of wisdom, much as to employ men belongs to practical statecraft; and they learn the reasonable share of the principle of authority in life.  They accept, for example, the testimony of others in matters of fact, and their mental results in those subjects with which such men are conversant, on the ground of a just faith in average human capacity in its own sphere; and, in particular, they accept provisional opinions, especially such as are alleged to be verifiable in action, and they put them to the test.  This is our habit in all parts of secular life—­in scholarship and in practical affairs.  ’If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God,’ is only a special instance of this law of temporary acceptance and experiment in all life.  It is a reasonable command.  The confusion of human opinion largely arises from the fact that the greater part of it is unverifiable, owing to the deficient culture or opportunity of those who hold it; and the persistency with which such opinion is argued, clung to, and cherished, is the cause of many of the permanent differences that array men in opposition.  The event would dispense with the argument; but in common life, which knows far more of the world than it has in its own laboratory, much lies beyond the reach of such real solution.  It is the distinction of vital religious truth that it is not so withdrawn from true proof, but is near at hand in the daily life open to all.

“Such authority, then, as is commonly granted in science, politics, or commerce to the past results and expectations of men bringing human life in these provinces down to our time and delivering it, not as a new, but as an incomplete thing, into the hands of our generation, we may yield also in religion.  The lives of the saints and all those who in history have illustrated the methods and results of piety, their convictions, speculations, and hopes, their warning and encouragement, compose a great volume of instruction, illustration, and education of the religious life.  It is folly to ignore this, as it would be to ignore the alphabet of letters, the Arabic numerals, or the Constitution; for, as these are the monuments of past achievement and an advantage we have at our start over savage man, so in religion there are as well established results of life already lived.  Though the religious life be personal, it is not more so than all life of thought and emotion;