Liberal's. In the first place, I must admit that you are thoroughly
consistent with yourself as far as you go. But, my dear fellow, where
does your consistency lead you to? You claim to be a freethinker, and
yet you conclude that you are an entire slave and even think as you
do because you cannot help it.

I stated at the beginning of my reply to Mr. Liberal that many
religious facts must be accepted without thoroughly understanding
them, and claimed that it is reasonable to so accept them. I will now
endeavor to explain myself more fully. It seems to me that if
anything has been proven, it is that our logical reason is not always
a safe guide. For example, we cannot conceive of an end to
divisibility of space; and therefore we cannot conceive how we can
reach a given point. Now, practice gives the lie to this conclusion,
and if some rationalist should follow his reason here, he would
conclude that he can never get a piece of food into his mouth; or, in
other words, the logical conclusion would lead to starvation. I know
that some will deny this as a logical conclusion to get out of the
difficulty. But I could never see it as otherwise than logical, and I
have a goodly list of thinkers who have reached the same conclusion
before me. Again, it is admitted by all thinkers of all ages that our
reason tells us that there cannot be existence without beginning, or,
on the other hand, there can be no beginning of existence without
something existing before to cause its existence.

The conclusion is that inconceivability is not an infallible proof of
the absence of a fact, and that we must follow our experience even if
it conflicts with our reason. This is what we claim to do in
religion. Whether experience is the sole source of knowledge is a
question we need not discuss here. It is certainly the only safe