impossible. I should like to see the defined Christian dogma written
down and the final scientific discovery written against it. I have
never seen this yet. What I have seen is that even the greatest
scientific dogmas are not final. We have just this moment agreed that
the ideas of the physical universe, which are really and truly
"obsolete," are the very ideas taught by physicists thirty years ago.
What I think you mean is that science has shown _miracles_ to be
untrue. But miracles are not ideas about the nature of the physical
universe. They are ideas about the nature of a power capable of
breaking through the nature of the physical universe. And science has
not shown that to be untrue, for anybody who can think.

Lastly, you say that it is indeed necessary that Religion should
exist, but that its essence is Mysticism; and this does not need to
be organised. I should answer that nothing on earth needs to be
organised so much as Mysticism. You say that man tends naturally to
religion; he does indeed; often in the form of human sacrifice or the
temples of Sodom. Almost all extreme evil of that kind is mystical.
The only way of keeping it healthy is to have some rules, some
responsibilities, some definitions of dogma and moral function. That
at least, as you yourself put it, is what I think; and I hope you
will not blame me for saying so. But as to what I said, in that
particular article, it was quite clearly written upon wrong
information and it will give me great pleasure to do my best to
publish the fact.

In any such argument Gilbert was never, in the words of the Gospel,
"willing to justify himself." He only wanted to justify certain
ideas, and the thought of having misrepresented anyone else was
distressing to him.

Even the hardened controversialist Coulton wrote in the course of one
of their arguments:

If I speak very plainly of your historical methods, it is not that
I do not fully respect your conversion. I have more sympathy with
your Catholicity than (partly no doubt by my own fault) you may be
inclined to think; I believe you to have made a sacrifice of the sort
that is never altogether vain; it is therefore part of my faith that
you are near to that which I also am trying to approach; and, if this
belief does little or nothing to colour my criticisms in this
particular discussion, that is because I believ