thousand unfitnesses evident in the world, rendered the existence of one
perfectly wise and good and powerful, absolutely impossible. If one said
to him that he believed thousands of things he had never himself known,
he answered he did so upon testimony. If one rejoined that here too we
have testimony, he replied it was not credible testimony, but founded on
such experiences as he was justified in considering imaginary, seeing
they were like none he had ever had himself. When he was asked whether,
while he yet believed there was such a being as his mother told him of,
he had ever set himself to act upon that belief, he asserted himself
fortunate in the omission of what might have riveted on him the fetters
of a degrading faith. For years he had turned his face toward all
speculation favoring the non-existence of a creating Will, his back
toward all tending to show that such a one might be. Argument on the
latter side he set down as born of prejudice, and appealing to weakness;
on the other, as springing from courage, and appealing to honesty. He
had never put it to himself which would be the worse deception--to
believe there was a God when there was none; or to believe there was no
God when there was one.

He had, however, a large share of the lower but equally indispensable
half of religion--that, namely, which has respect to one's fellows. Not
a man in Glaston was readier, by day or by night, to run to the help of
another, and that not merely in his professional capacity, but as a
neighbor, whatever the sort of help was needed.

Thomas Wingfold, the curate, had a great respect for him. Having himself
passed through many phases of serious, and therefore painful doubt, he
was not as much shocked by the surgeon's unbelief as some whose real
faith was even less than Faber's; but he seldom laid himself out to
answer his objections. He sought rather, but as yet apparently in vain,