PROBABILITIES.




AN AID TO FAITH.


The certainty of those things which most surely are believed among us,
is a matter quite distinct from their antecedent probability or
improbability. We know, and take for facts, that Cromwell and Napoleon
existed, and are persuaded that their characters and lives were such as
history reports them: but it is another thing, and one eminently
calculated to disturb any disbeliever of such history, if a man were
enabled to show, that, from the condition of social anarchy, there was
an antecedent likelihood for the use of military despots; that, from the
condition of a popular puritanism, or a popular infidelity, it was
previously to have been expected that such leaders should have the
several characteristics of a bigoted zeal for religion, or a craving
appetite for worldly glory; that, from the condition liable to
revolutions, it was probable to find such despots arising out of the
middle class; and that, from the condition of reaction incidental to all
human violences, there was a clear expectability that the power of such
military monarchs should not be continued to their natural heirs.

Such a line of argument, although in no measure required for the