e Major would learn how to sleep like a
gentleman; and began to think about his religion in itself.

* * * * *

After all, he began to say to himself, what proof was there--real
scientific proof--that the thing was true at all? Certainly there was a
great deal of it that was, very convincing--there was the curious ring
of assertion and confidence in it, there was its whole character,
composed (like personality) of countless touches too small to be
definable; there was the definite evidence adduced from history and
philosophy and all the rest. But underneath all that--was there, after
all, any human evidence in the world sufficient to establish the
astounding dogmas that lay at the root? Was it conceivable that any such
evidence could be forthcoming?

He proceeded to consider the series of ancient dilemmas which, I
suppose, have presented themselves at some time or another to every
reasonable being--Free-will and Predestination; Love and Pain;
Foreknowledge and Sin; and their companions. And it appeared to him, in
this cold, emotionless mood, when the personality shivers, naked, in the
presence of monstrous and unsympathetic forces, that his own religion,
as much as every other, was entirely powerless before them.

He advanced yet further: he began to reflect upon the innumerable little
concrete devotions that he had recently learned--the repetition of
certain words, the performance of certain actions--the rosary for
instance; and he began to ask himself how it was credible that they
could possibly make any difference to eternal issues.

These things had not yet surrounded themselves with the atmosphere of
experience and association, and they had lost the romance of novelty;
they lay before him detached, so to say, and unconvincing.

I do not mean to say that during this hour he consciously disbelieved;
he honestly attempted to answer these questions; he threw himself back
upon authority and attempted to reassure himself by reflecting that
human brains a great deal more acute than his own found in the dilemmas
no final obstacles to faith; he placed himself under the shelter of the
Church and tried to say blindly that he believed what she believed. But,
in a sense, he was powerless: the blade of his adversary was quicker
than his own; his will was very nearly dormant; his heart was entirely
lethargic, and his intellect was clear up to a certain point and
extraordinarily swift....

Ha