be as convincing an expression
of God's presence as a series of cataclysmic acts of creation?

None the less it was a time of crisis, for him, as for so many. For, if
this were so, if science spoke true that, the miracle of life set
a-going, there had been no further intervention on the part of the
Creator, then the very head-and-corner stone of the Christian faith,
the Bible itself, was shaken. More, much more would have to go than the
Mosaic cosmogony of the first chapter of Genesis. Just as the Elohistic
account of creation had been stretched to fit the changed views of
geologists, so the greater part of the scriptural narratives stood in
need of a wider interpretation. The fable of the Eternal's personal
mediation in the affairs of man must be accepted for what it was--a
beautiful allegory, the fondly dreamed fulfilment of a world-old
desire. And bringing thus a sharpened critical sense to bear on the
Scriptures, Mahony embarked on his voyage of discovery. Before him, but
more as a warning than a beacon, shone the example of a famous German
savant, who, taking our Saviour's life as his theme, demolished the
sacred idea of a Divine miracle, and retold the Gospel story from a
rationalistic standpoint. A savagely unimaginative piece of work this,
thought Mahony, and one that laid all too little weight on the deeps of
poetry, the mysteries of symbols, and the power the human mind drew
from these, to pierce to an ideal truth. His own modest efforts would
be of quite another kind.

For he sought, not to deny God, but to discover Him anew, by freeing
Him from the drift of error, superstition and dead-letterism which the
centuries had accumulated about Him. Far was it from His servant's mind
to wish to decry the authority of the Book of Books. This he believed
to consist, in great part, of inspired utterances, and, for the rest,
to be the wisest and ripest collection of moral precept and example
that had come down to us from the ages. Without it, one would be
rudderless indeed--a castaway in a cockleshell boat on a furious
sea--and from one's lips would go up a cry like to that wrung from a
famous infidel: "I am affrighted and confounded with the forlorn
solitude in which I am placed by my philosophy ... begin to fancy
myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed by the
deepest darkness."

No, Mahony was not one of those who held that the Christian faith, that
fine flower of man's spiritual need, would s