I have intimated above that belief may or may not be based on mathematical certainty.  Fill up a basket with black and white pebbles and then draw out one.  Let us create a situation that shall make it imperative for a person to declare whether a black or a white pebble will be drawn.  For instance, suppose the event to be controlled by an oriental despot who has given orders to strike off the man’s head if he announces the wrong color.  Of course, if he has seen that only white pebbles went into the basket he says boldly “White.”  That is certainty.  But suppose he saw one black pebble in the mass.  Does he any the less say “White”?  That one black pebble represents a tiny doubt; does it affect the direction of his enforced action?  Suppose there were two black pebbles; or a handful.  Suppose nearly half the pebbles were black?  Would that make the slightest difference about what he would do?  If you judge a man’s belief by what he does, as I think you should do, that belief may admit of a good deal of doubt before it is nullified.  Are your beliefs all based on mathematical certainties?  I hope not; for then they must be few indeed.

That many of our fellow men have a wrong conception of belief is a very sad fact.  The idea that it must be based on a mathematical demonstration of certainty, or even that it must be free from doubt is surely not Christian.  Our prayers and our hymns are full of the contrary.  We are beset not only by “fightings” but by “fears”—­“within; without;” by “many a conflict, many a doubt”; we pray to be delivered from this same doubt.  The whole body of Christian doctrine is permeated with the idea that the true believer is likely to be beset by doubts of all kinds, and that it is his duty, despite all this, to believe.

And yet there are many who will not call themselves Christians so long as they can not construct a rigid demonstration of every Christian doctrine.  There are many thoughtful men who call themselves Agnostics just because they can not be mathematically sure of religious truth.  Some of these men are better Christians than many that are so named.  That they hold aloof from Christian fellowship is due to their mistaken notion of the nature of belief.  The more is the pity.  Now let us go back for a moment to our basket of pebbles.  We have seen that the action of the guesser is based to some extent on his knowledge of the contents of the basket.  In other words, he has grounds for the belief by which his act is conditioned.  Persons may act without grounds; it may be necessary for them so to do.  Even in this case there may be a sort of blind substitute for belief.  A man, pursued by a bear, comes to a fork in the road.  He knows nothing about either branch; one may lead to safety and one to a jungle.  But he has to choose, and choose at once; and his choice represents his bid for safety.  There is plenty of action of this sort in the world; if we would avoid the necessity for it we must do a little preliminary investigation; and if we can not find definitely where the roads lead, we may at least hit upon some idea of which is the safest.