ot peace but a sword,
set up eternally His colossal realism against the eternal
sentimentality of the Secularist?

Thus, then, in the third instance, when the learned sceptic says:
"Christianity produced wars and persecutions," we shall reply:
"Naturally."

And, lastly, let me take an example which leads me on directly to
the general matter I wish to discuss for the remaining space of the
articles at my command. The Secularist constantly points out that the
Hebrew and Christian religions began as local things; that their god
was a tribal god; that they gave him material form, and attached him
to particular places.

This is an excellent example of one of the things that if I were
conducting a detailed campaign I should use as an argument for the
validity of Biblical experience. For if there really are some other
and higher beings than ourselves, and if they in some strange way, at
some emotional crisis, really revealed themselves to rude poets or
dreamers in very simple times, that these rude people should regard
the revelation as local, and connect it with the particular hill or
river where it happened, seems to me exactly what any reasonable
human being would expect. It has a far more credible look than if
they had talked cosmic philosophy from the beginning. If they had, I
should have suspected "priestcraft" and forgeries and third-century
Gnosticism.

If there be such a being as God, and He can speak to a child, and
if God spoke to a child in the garden, the child would, of course,
say that God lived in the garden. I should not think it any less
likely to be true for that. If the child said: "God is everywhere; an
impalpable essence pervading and supporting all constituents of the
Cosmos alike"--if, I say, the infant addressed me in the above terms,
I should think he was much more likely to have been with the
governess than with God.

So if Moses had said God was an Infinite Energy, I should be
certain he had seen nothing extraordinary. As he said He was a
Burning Bush, I think it very likely that he did see something
extraordinary. For whatever be the Divine Secret, and whether or no
it has (as all people have believed) sometimes broken bounds and
surged into our world, at least it lies on the side furthest away
from pedants and their definitions, and nearest to the silver souls
of quiet people