CHAPTER X.
MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM.
_Credo quia impossibile est._ If we look calmly at the possible future of human thought, it will appear from what we have just seen, that physical science of itself can do little to control or cramp it; nor until man consents to resign his belief in virtue and his own dignity altogether, will it be able to repress religious faith, should other causes tend to produce a new outbreak of it.

But the chief difficulties in the matter are still in store for us.

Let us see never so clearly that science, if we are moral beings, can do nothing to weaken our belief in God and immortality, but still leaves us free, if we will, to believe in them, it seems getting clearer and yet more clear that these beliefs are inconsistent with themselves, and conflict with these very moral feelings, of which they are invoked as an explanation.

Here it is true that reason does confront us, and what answer to make to it is a very serious question.

This applies even to natural religion in its haziest and most compliant form; and as applied to any form of orthodoxy its force is doubled.