whether, if He does, it much imports us to know; or whether, if He
has revealed that knowledge, it is possible or impossible for us
to ascertain it; when I hear him further saying, that meantime he
is disposed to make himself very easy in the midst of these
uncertainties, and to await the great revelation of the future
with philosophical, that is, being interpreted, with idiotic
tranquillity, I see that, in point of fact, he has never entered
into the question at all; that he has failed to realize the terrible
moment of the questions (however they may be decided) of which he
speaks with such amazing flippancy.

It is too often the result of thoughtlessness; of a wish to get
rid of truths unwelcome to the heart; of a vain love of paradox,
or perhaps, in many cases, (as a friend of mine said,) of an
amiable wish to frighten "mammas and maiden aunts." But let us be
assured that a frivolous sceptic,--a sceptic indeed,--after duly
pondering and feeling the doubts he professes to embrace, is an
impossibility. What may be expected in the genuine sceptic is a
modest hope that he may be mistaken, a desire to be confuted; a
retention of his convictions as if they were a guilty secret; or
the promulgation of them only as the utterance of an agonized heart,
unable to suppress the language of its misery; a dread of making
proselytes,--even as men refrain from exposing their sores or
plague-infected garments in the eyes of the world. The least we can
expect from him is that mood of mind which Pascal so sublimely says
becomes the Atheist ... "Is this, then, a thing to be said with
gayety? Is it not rather a thing to be said with tears as the saddest
thing in the world?"

The current of conversation after a while, somehow swept us round