2d.  Faith and reason are often invidiously contrasted with each other, as if they were commonly described in Scripture as antagonists; whereas faith is more properly opposed to sight, or to lust, being, in fact, a very high exercise of the pure reason; inasmuch as we believe truths which our senses do not teach us, and which our passions would have us, therefore, reject, because those truths are taught by Him in whom reason recognises its own author, and the infallible source of all truth.

3d.  It were better to oppose reason to passion than to faith; for it may be safely said, that he who neglects his reason, so far as he does neglect it, does not lead a life of faith afterwards, but a life of passion.  He does not draw nearer to God, but to the brutes, or rather to the devils; for his passions cannot be the mere instinctive appetites of the brute, but derive from the wreck of his intellectual powers, which he cannot utterly destroy, just so much of a higher nature that they are sins, and not instincts, belonging to the malignity of diabolic nature, rather than to the mere negative evil of the nature of brutes.

4th.  Faith may be described as reason leaning upon God.  Without God, reason is either overpowered by sense and understanding, and, in a manner, overgrown, so that it cannot comprehend its proper truths; or, being infinite, it cannot discover all the truths which concern it, and therefore needs a farther revelation to enlighten it.  But with God’s grace strengthening it to assert its supremacy over sense and understanding, and communicating to it what of itself it could not have discovered, it then having gained strength and light not its own, and doing and seeing consciously by God’s help, becomes properly faith.

5th.  Faith without reason, is not properly faith, but mere power worship; and power worship may be devil worship; for it is reason which entertains the idea of God—­an idea essentially made up of truth and goodness, no less than of power.  A sign of power exhibited to the senses might, through them, dispose the whole man to acknowledge it as divine; yet power in itself is not divine, it may be devilish.  But when reason recognises that, along with this power, there exist also wisdom and goodness, then it perceives that here is God; and the worship which, without reason, might have been idolatry, being now according to reason is faith.

6th.  If this were considered, men would be more careful of speaking disparagingly of reason, seeing that it is the necessary condition of the existence of faith.  It is quite true, that when we have attained to faith, it supersedes reason; we walk by sunlight, rather than by moonlight; following the guidance of infinite reason, instead of finite.  But how are we to attain to faith? in other words, how can we distinguish God’s voice from the voice of evil? for we must distinguish it to be God’s voice before we can have faith in it.  We distinguish