Reason can strengthen faith, but things that are beyond reason can be reached by faith alone. If faith is limited by reason it is held down so that it cannot rise, but when faith is independent of reason it is raised by the force of the ideal, and then reason has scope to advance and reach the ideal. Those who believe in an ideal and those who do not have both arrived at their conviction by faith; in the former it is positive, in the latter negative. An unbeliever asked a believer, "If there were no God then would not all your prayers and expectations be in vain?" The believer answered, "If there be no God, and if my prayers are vain and all that I have done for God is lost, then I am in the same case as you, but if He exists, then I have the advantage." Faith is natural and its negative unnatural.