So we may discuss the gravest questions unblamed over our morning coffee-cups or our evening tea-cups.
There is no rest for the Protestant until he gives up his legendary anthropology and all its dogmatic dependencies.
It is only incidentally, however, that the Professor at the Breakfast-Table handles matters which are the subjects of religious controversy.

The reader who is sensitive about having his fixed beliefs dealt with as if they were open to question had better skip the pages which look as if they would disturb his complacency.

"Faith" is the most precious of possessions, and it dislikes being meddled with.

It means, of course, self-trust,--that is, a belief in the value of our, own opinion of a doctrine, of a church, of a religion, of a Being, a belief quite independent of any evidence that we can bring to convince a jury of our fellow beings.

Its roots are thus inextricably entangled with those of self-love and bleed as mandrakes were said to, when pulled up as weeds.