by love or no two lovers
by circumstances? It is tolerably plain, surely, that these two
stories are common because the situation is an intensely probable and
human one, because our nature is so built as to make them almost
inevitable . . .

Thus, in this first instance, when learned sceptics come to me and
say, "Are you aware that the Kaffirs have a sort of Incarnation?" I
should reply: "Speaking as an unlearned person, I don't know. But
speaking as a Christian, I should be very much astonished if they
hadn't."

Take a second instance. The Secularist says that Christianity has
been a gloomy and ascetic thing, and points to the procession of
austere or ferocious saints who have given up home and happiness and
macerated health and sex. But it never seems to occur to him that the
very oddity and completeness of these men's surrender make it look
very much as if there were really something actual and solid in the
thing for which they sold themselves. They gave up all pleasures for
one pleasure of spiritual ecstasy. They may have been mad; but it
looks as if there really were such a pleasure. They gave up all human
experiences for the sake of one superhuman experience. They may have
been wicked, but it looks as if there were such an experience.

It is perfectly tenable that this experience is as dangerous and
selfish a thing as drink. A man who goes ragged and homeless in order
to see visions may be as repellant and immoral as a man who goes
ragged and homeless in order to drink brandy. That is a quite
reasonable position. But what is manifestly not a reasonable
position, what would be, in fact, not far from being an insane
position, would be to say that the raggedness of the man, and the
stupefied degradation of the man, proved that there was no such thing
as brandy. That is precisely what the Secularist tries to say. He
tries to prove that there is no such thing as supernatural experience
by pointing at the people who have given up everything for it. He
tries to prove that there is no such thing by proving that there are
people who live on nothing else.

Again I may submissively ask: "Whose is the Paradox?" . . .

Take a third instance. The Secularist says that Christianity
produced tumult and cruelty. He seems to suppose that this proves it
to be bad. But it might prove it to be very good. For men commit