whole
soon get tired of them. They give too much trouble. The most powerful
forces in human nature are self-protection and inertia. The middle-aged
man has found out that the chief wisdom in life is to bend to the
pressures about him, to shut up and do as others do. Even when he thinks
he has rid his own mind of superstitions, he sees that he will best
enjoy a peaceful life by leaving other peoples' superstitions alone.
That is always the ultimate view of the crowd."

"But I don't see," observed Theron, "granting that all this is true, how
you think the Catholic Church will come out on top. I could understand
it of Unitarianism, or Universalism, or the Episcopal Church, where
nobody seems to have to believe particularly in anything except the
beauty of its burial service, but I should think the very rigidity of
the Catholic creed would make it impossible. There everything is hard
and fast; nothing is elastic; there is no room for compromise."

"The Church is always compromising," explained the priest, "only it does
it so slowly that no one man lives long enough to quite catch it at the
trick. No; the great secret of the Catholic Church is that it doesn't
debate with sceptics. No matter what points you make against it, it
is never betrayed into answering back. It simply says these things are
sacred mysteries, which you are quite free to accept and be saved, or
reject and be damned. There is something intelligible and fine about
an attitude like that. When people have grown tired of their absurd and
fruitless wrangling over texts and creeds which, humanly speaking, are
all barbaric nonsense, they will come back to repose pleasantly under
the Catholic roof, in that restful house where things are taken for
granted. There the manners are charming, the service excellent, the
decoration and upholstery most acceptable to the eye, and the music"--he
made a little mock bow here to Celia--"the music at least is divine.
There you have nothing to do but be agreeable, and avoid scandal, and
observe the convenances. You are no more expected to express doubts
about the Immaculate Conception than you are to ask the lady whom you
take down to dinner how old she is. Now that is, as I have said,
an intelligent and rational church for people to have. As the Irish
civilize themselves--you observe them diligently engaged in the process
down below there--and the social roughness of their church becomes
softened and ameliorated, Americans wil