I do not know that he did not commit it; but I have grounds here for
faith. In the light of his past life, of his experience, of his
temptations, of his opportunities to go wrong, and of his having gone
right, in the light of all this past experience of years, I have faith
in this man; and I say it, and I am talking reason and sense. In the
other case I am talking folly.

Faith, you see, is a rational faculty. Let me give you another
illustration. Suppose I am driving along through the country some
morning when there is a very thick fog hanging over the landscape. The
fog is so thick that I can see no more than ten or fifteen feet ahead
of me; but I discover that I am near the bank of a river, and I come to
the entrance to a bridge. I can see enough to know that here is an
abutment of a bridge and an arch springing out into the fog. I drive on
to that bridge with simple confidence. I do not know that there is any
other end to the bridge. I have never seen it before. I have seen other
bridges, however; and I know that, generally, bridges not only begin
somewhere, but end somewhere. So, though I do not know for certain that
the bridge ends on the other side of the river, for aught I know there
may be a break in it, the bridge may not be completed, something may
have happened to it, I confidently drive on; and in ninety-nine times
out of a hundred my faith is justified by the result. This is a pure
act of faith, but faith, do you not see, based in reality, springing
out of experience, and so a purely rational act of the mind.

Let me give you one illustration of the scientific use of faith, very
striking, beautiful, as it seems to me. The only time Mr. Huxley was in
this country, I happened to be in New York, and heard him give the
opening one of a brief course of three lectures in Chickering Hall. He
was very much interested then in the ancestry of the horse. Most of you