(The Doubter lays aside his book.) "Answered a score of times." Oh, looked for teacher, is this all you will teach me? I in the dark reaching my hand for you to help me forth to the happy sunshine where you stand, "Oh shame, to be in the dark there, prisoned!" answer you; "there are ledges somewhere there by which strong feet might scale to daylight: I would lift you out with just a touch, but that your need's so slight; for there are ledges." And I grope and strain, think I've found footing, and slip baffled back, slip, maybe, deeper downwards. "Oh, my guide, I find no ledges: help me: say at least where they are placed, that I may know to seek." But you in anger, "Nay, wild wilful soul, thou will rot in the dark, God's sunshine here at thy prison's very lip: blame not the guide; have I not told thee there is footing for thee?" and so you leave me, and with even tread guide men along the highway ... where, I think, they need you less. Say 'twas my wanton haste, or my drowsed languor, my too earthward eyes watching for hedge flowers, or my too rapt gaze it the mock sunshine of a sky-born cloud, that led me, blindling, here: say the black walls grew round me while I slept, or that I built with ignorant hands a temple for my soul to pray in to herself, and that, for want of a window heavenwards, a loathsome night of mildew and decay festered upon it, till the rotted pillars fell and tombed me in: let it so be my fault, whichever way, must I be left to die? A murderer is helped by holy hands to the byway road that comes at God through shame; a thief is helped; A harlot; a sleek cozener that prays, swindles his customers, and gives God thanks, and so to bed with prayers. Let them repent, lay let them not repent, you'll say "These souls may yet be saved, and make a joy in heaven:" you are thankful you have found them, you whose charge is healing sin. But I, hundreds as I, whose sorrow 'tis only to long to know, and know too plainly that we know not yet, we are beyond your mercies. You pass by and note the moral of our fate: 'twill point a Sunday's sermon ... for we have our use, boggarts to placid Christians in their pews-- "Question not, prove not, lest you grow like these:" and then you tell them how we daze ourselves on problems now so many times resolved that you'll not re-resolve them, how we crave new proofs, as once an evil race desired new signs and could not see, for stubbornness, signs given already. Proofs enough, you say, quote precedent, "Hear Moses and the prophets." I know the answer given across the gulf, but I know too what Christ did: there were proofs, enough for John and Peter, yet He taught new proofs and meanings to those doubting two who sorrowing walked forth to Emmaus and came back joyful. "They," you'd answer me, if you owned my instance, "sorrowed in their doubt, and did not wholly doubt, and loved." Oh, men who read the age's heart in library books writ by our fathers, this is how you know it! Do we say "The old faith is obsolete, the world wags all the better, let us laugh," we of to-day? Why will you not divine the fathomless sorrow of doubt? why not divine the yearning to be lost from it in love? And who doubts wholly? That were not to doubt. Doubt's to be ignorant, not to deny: doubt's to be wistful after perfect faith. You will not think that: you come not to us to ask of us, who know doubt, what doubt is, but one by one you pass the echoes on, each of his own pulpit, each of all the pulpits, and in the swelling sound can never catch the tremulous voice of doubt that wails in the cold: you make sham thunder for it, to outpeal with your own better thunders. You wise man and worthy, utter honest in your will, I love you and I trust you: so I thought "Here's one whose love keeps measure to belief with onward vigorous feet, one quick of sight to catch the clue in scholars'puzzle-knots, deft to unweave the coil to one straight thread, one strong to grapple vague Protean faith and keep her to his heart in one fixed shape and living; he comes forward in his strength, as to a battlefield to answer challenge, as in a storm to buffet with the waves for shipwrecked men clutching the frothy crests and sinking; he is stalwart on my side-- mine, who, untrained and weaponless, have warred at the powers of unbelief, and am borne down-- mine, who am struggling in the sea for breath." I looked to you as the sick man in his pain looks to the doctor whose sharp medicines have the taste of health behind them, looked to you for--well, for a boon different from this. My doctor tells me "Why, quite long ago they knew your fever (or one very like); and they k