ce which speaks in our
hearts, though it has caught some accretion of human passion and
superstition. The popular versions are false and debased; the old
versions of the Atonement, for example, monstrous; and the belief in
the everlasting torture of sinners, a hideous and groundless
caricature. With much that such men have said I could, of course, agree
heartily; for, indeed, it expresses the strongest feelings which have
caused religious revolt. But would it not be simpler to say, "the
doctrine is not true," than to say, "it is true, but means just the
reverse of what it was also taken to mean"? I prefer plain terms; and
"without doubt he shall perish everlastingly" seems to be an awkward
way of denying the endlessness of punishment. You cannot denounce the
immorality of the old dogmas with the infidel, and then proclaim their
infinite value with the believer. You defend the doctrine by showing
that in its plain downright sense,--the sense in which it embodied
popular imaginations,--it was false and shocking. The proposal to hold
by the words evacuated of the old meaning is a concession of the whole
case to the unbeliever, and a substitution of sentiment and aspiration
for a genuine intellectual belief. Explaining away, however dexterously
and delicately, is not defending, but at once confessing error, and
encumbering yourself with all the trammels of misleading associations.
The more popular method, therefore, at the present day is not to
rationalise, but to try to outsceptic the sceptic. We are told that we
have no solid ground from reason at all, and that even physical science
is as full of contradictions as theology. Such enterprises, conducted
with whatever ingenuity, are, as I believe, hopeless; but at least they
are fundamentally and radically sceptical. That, under whatever
disguises, is the true meaning of the Catholic argument, which is so
persuasive to many. To prove the truth of Christianity by abstract
reasoning may be hopeless; but nothing is easier than to persuade
yourself to believe it, if once you will trust instinct in place of
reason, and forget that instinct proves anything and everything. The
success of such arguments with thoughtful men is simply a measure of
the spread of scepticism. The conviction that truth is unattainable is
the master argument for submitting to "authority". The "authority," in
the scientific sense of any set of men who agree upon a doctrine,
varies directly as their independe