Curiosity concerning evil or dangerous knowledge is more impetuous when a sudden emancipation of mind sweeps the old landmarks and restraints out of sight, and nothing has been foreseen which can serve as a guide.  Then is the time when weak places in education show themselves, when the least insincerity in the presentment of truth brings its own punishment, and a faith not pillared and grounded in all honesty is in danger of failing.  The best security is to have nothing to unlearn, to know that what one knows is a very small part of what can be known, but that as far as it goes it is true and genuine, and cannot be outgrown, that it will stand both the wear of time and the test of growing power of thought, and that those who have taught these beliefs will never have to retract or be ashamed of them, or own that they were passed off, though inadequate, upon the minds of children.

It is not unusual to meet girls who are troubled with “doubts” as to faith and difficulties which alarm both them and their friends.  Sometimes when these “doubts” are put into words they turn out to be mere difficulties, and it has not been understood that “ten thousand difficulties do not make a doubt.”  Sometimes the difficulties are scarcely real, and come simply from catching up objections which they do not know how to answer, and think unanswerable.  Sometimes a spirit of contradiction has been aroused, and a captious tendency, or a love of excitement and sensationalism, with a wish to see the other side.  Sometimes imperfect teaching has led them to expect the realization of things as seen, which are only to be assented to as believed, so that there is a hopeless effort to imagine, to feel, and to feel sure, to lean in some way upon what the senses can verify, and the acquiescence, assent, and assurance of faith seems all insufficient to give security.  Sometimes there is genuine ignorance of what is to be believed, and of what it is to believe.  Sometimes it is merely a question of nerves, a want of tone in the mind, insufficient occupation and training which has thrown the mind back upon itself to its own confusion.  Sometimes they come from want of understanding that there must be mysteries in faith, and a multitude of questions that do not admit of complete answers, that God would not be God if the measure of our minds could compass His, that the course of His Providence must transcend our experience and judgment, and that if the truths of faith forced the assent of our minds all the value of that assent would be taken away.  If these causes and a few others were removed one may ask oneself how many “doubts” and difficulties would remain in the ordinary walks of Catholic life.