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2.2. When Niebuhr asks, "What cause or being justifies all the pain and effort of living, the carrying on the work of civilization, the continuance of the human species?" is he not asking, in effect, what cause or being is genuinely worshipful, worship being understood as unreserved trust and unqualified loyalty?

Wiki Markup2.3. If Niebuhr is right that "mature faith" in matters of conduct can assert, "There is a right, even though all my standards \ [of right\] are but poor and imperfect and unrighteous approximations of its content," then, presumably, "mature faith" in the two other matters of knowledge and belief (in Niebuhr's sense) could assert something similar. Thus in the matter of knowledge, mature faith could assert, "There is a real, ,even though all my standards \ [of the,real\] are but poor and imperfect and unrighteous approximations of its content."    And in the matter of belief, it could assert,''There is a cause or being finally worth living and dying for, even though all my.standards \ [of what is finally worthy in this sense\] are but poor and imperfect and unrighteous approximations of its content." But, then, how would such a "mature faith" in matters of belief differ, if at all, from the belief of which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks, i.e., the belief of those who "come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought \ [not, as he misleadingly puts it, to get itself accepted, but to prove itself worthy of acceptance\!\] in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out"?

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