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