from us. The Catholic Church is the only dogmatic religion that has seen
what dogmatism really implies, and what will, in the long run, be
demanded of it, and she contains in herself all appliances for meeting
these demands. She alone has seen that if there is to be an infallible
voice in the world, this voice must be a living one, as capable of
speaking now as it ever was in the past; and that as the world's
capacities for knowledge grow, the teacher must be always able to unfold
to it a fuller teaching. The Catholic Church is the only historical
religion that can conceivably thus adapt itself to the wants of the
present day, without virtually ceasing to be itself. It is the only
religion that can keep its identity without losing its life, and keep
its life without losing its identity; that can enlarge its teachings
without changing them; that can be always the same, and yet be always
developing.

All this, of course, does not prove that Catholicism _is_ the truth; but
it will show the theist that, for all that the modern world can tell
him, it may be. And thus much at least will by-and-by come to be
recognised generally. Opinion, that has been clarified on so many
subjects, cannot remain forever turbid here. A change must come, and a
change can only be for the better. At present the so-called leaders of
enlightened and liberal thought are in this matter, so far as fairness
and insight go, on a level with the wives and mothers of our small
provincial shopkeepers, or the beadle or churchwarden of a country
parish. But prejudice, even when so virulent and so dogged as this, will
lift and disappear some day like a London fog; and then the lineaments
of the question will confront us clearly--the question: but who shall
decide the answer?

What I have left to say bears solely upon this.

CHAPTER XIII.

BELIEF AND WILL.

'_Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for
righteousness._'

Arguments are like the seed, or like the soul, as Paul conceived of it,
which he compared to seed. They are not quickened unless they die. As
long as they remain for us in the form of arguments they do no work.
Their work begins only, after a time and in secret, when they have sunk
down into the memory, and have been left to lie there; when the
hostility and distrust they were regarded with dies away; when,
unperceived, they melt into the mental system, and, becoming part of
oneself, effect a turning round of t