"Thoughts and Apothegms."
"Those who boldly stand out and court inquiry, and bring forward cogent reason for their conviction, are reproached by a certain modern writer, with infirm faith and timidity. Timidity of all things! One is reminded of the story of some Indian savages serving as allies to the British in America, who, when the allied force was attacked by the enemy, ran and took shelter in the woods, while the Brittish troops stood firm under a heavy fire, and repulsed the assailants. It was expected that their Indian friends would have been full of admiration at this display of superior valor; but, on the contrary, their interpretation of it was, that the British soldiers were such cowards that they were too much frightened to run away. Almost every chapter in the New Testament convicts the Lord Jesus and his followers of that "timidity," in appealing to that evidence of miracles and prophecies, which is censured and derided." "All men wish to have truth on their side, but few to be on the side of truth." "Men miss truth more often from their indifference about it, than from intellectual capacity." "The pursuit of religious truth is the noblest, as it is the most important pursuit in which any human being can be engaged." "To dread danger from the progress of any truth, physical, moral, or religious, is to manifest a want of faith in God's power, or, in his will to maintain his own cause." "Falsehood, like the dry-rot, flourishes the more in proportion as light and air are excluded." "Truths dangerous, indeed; yes—and so are meat and drink; but who will therefore resolve to perish with hunger?" "It is often said, that though it may be well for learned and skillful divines to have the objections to Christianity placed before them, yet that it is better not to notice objections generally, for fear of alarming and unsettling the minds of the plain unlearned people, who had, probably, never heard anything of the kind. Now, many persons, who have never heard anything distinct on the subject, have heard, and are made uneasy by, vague reports and obscure rumors of objections made by some supposed learned men, who have proceeded on rational grounds, without knowing distinctly what they are; when, perhaps, if these objections were clearly stated to them, they are qualified by their own plain sense, to see how irrational they are. Suppose you were startled in a dark night by something that looked like a specter in a winding-sheet, would not he who should bring a lantern and show you that it was nothing but a white cloth hanging on a bush, give you far better encouragement, than he who merely exhorted you to "look another way, keep up your heart, whistle and pass on?"—Sel.