ARGUMENTS FROM IGNORANCE.
Those persons who believe nothing but what they can see, are likely to have very short creeds. Those who credit nothing which they cannot understand, make their ignorance the measure of their faith. It is related that Louis XIV. of France, sent an ambassador to the King of Siam, who told that monarch that in France the cold was so intense at times that men could walk upon the water, which sometimes became firm enough to bear up an elephant. The thing seemed so absurd, so contrary to all experience and observation, so utterly impossible, that the king took the story for an insult and threatened the ambassador with instant death. He knew too much to be deceived by such stories,—in Siam water never became hard! There is an account of an Indian who was sent by his tribe to Washington, and on his return, while relating the wonderful things he had observed, he declared that he had seen the white people fasten a great ball to a canoe, and so rise into the clouds and travel through the heavens. This story, so absurd, so unreasonable, so contrary to all experience, was at once pronounced impossible, and a young warrior instantly leveled his rifle and shot the Indian dead, regarding him as too great a liar to be allowed to live. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the man who had declared it possible to print forty thousand newspapers in an hour on a single press; or to travel over the country at the rate of a mile a minute; or to send a message or ask a question across the Atlantic Ocean and receive an answer within an hour's time, would very likely have been considered a lunatic or a liar; and yet all these things come within the scope of our observation to-day. The impossibilities of the by-gone years have become the common occurrences of the present time; and if men are so ignorant of their own powers that they would a few years since have counted a man a liar for declaring what they themselves are believing and doing to-day, what shall we say of19those who presume to limit the Holy One of Israel, and deny the power of God, the Creator of the world. He who formed this earth at first, can do what he will with it; and He who has made man in his own image can restore his vanished life, and bring him back again from the dust of the silent sepulcher. “For with God all things are possible.”—The Christian (Boston).