lity for his belief, and more
anxious for truth than for success in life, finds, when he looks into
the matter, that the archbishop has altogether misrepresented it; that
in fact, like other official persons, he had been using merely a
stereotyped form of words, to which he attached no definite meaning. The
words are repeated year after year, but the enemies refuse to be
exorcised. They come and come again, from Spinoza and Lessing to Strauss
and Renan. The theologians have resolved no single difficulty; they
convince no one who is not convinced already; and a Colenso coming
fresh to the subject with no more than a year's study, throws the Church
of England into convulsions.

If there were any real danger that Christianity would cease to be
believed, it would be no more than a fulfilment of prophecy. The state
in which the Son of Man would find the world at his coming he did not
say would be a state of faith. But if that dark time is ever literally
to come upon the earth, there are no present signs of it. The creed of
eighteen centuries is not about to fade away like an exhalation, nor are
the new lights of science so exhilarating that serious persons can look
with comfort to exchanging one for the other. Christianity has abler
advocates than its professed defenders, in those many quiet and humble
men and women who in the light of it and the strength of it live holy,
beautiful, and self-denying lives. The God that answers by fire is the
God whom mankind will acknowledge; and so long as the fruits of the
Spirit continue to be visible in charity, in self-sacrifice, in those
graces which raise human creatures above themselves, and invest them
with that beauty of holiness which only religion confers, thoughtful
persons will remain convinced that with them in some form or other is
the secret of truth. The body will not thrive on poison, or the soul on
falsehood; and as the vital processes of health are too subtle for
science to follow; as we choose our food, not by the most careful
chemical analysis, but by the experience of its effects upon the system;
so when a particular belief is fruitful in nobleness of character, we
need trouble ourselves very little with scientific demonstrations that
it is false. The most deadly poison may be chemically undistinguishable
from substances which are perfectly innocent. Prussic acid, we are told,
is formed of the same elements, combined in the same proportions, as
gum-arabic.

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