rejudices of his provincial culture,
that constitute the adventurous and varied second stage of the
conversion. It is, broadly speaking, the stage in which the man is
unconsciously trying to be converted. And the third stage is perhaps
the truest and most terrible. It is that in which the man is trying
not to be converted. He has come too near to the truth, and has
forgotten that truth is a magnet, with the powers of attraction and
repulsion."*

[* _The Catholic Church and Conversion_, p. 61.]

To a certain extent it is a fear which attaches to all sharp and
irrevocable decisions; it is suggested in all the old jokes about the
shakiness of the bridegroom at the wedding or the recruit who takes
the shilling and gets drunk partly to celebrate, but partly also to
forget it. But it is the fear of a fuller sacrament and a mightier
army. . . . *

[* Ibid., p. 65.]

The man has exactly the same sense of having committed or
compromised himself; or having been in a sense entrapped, even if he
is glad to be entrapped. But for a considerable time he is not so
much glad as simply terrified. It may be that this real psychological
experience has been misunderstood by stupider people and is
responsible for all that remains of the legend that Rome is a mere
trap. But that legend misses the whole point of the psychology. It is
not the Pope who has set the trap or the priests who have baited it.
The whole point of the position is that the trap is simply the truth.
The whole point is that the man himself has made his way towards the
trap of truth, and not the trap that has run after the man. All steps
except the last step he has taken eagerly on his own account, out of
interest in the truth; and even the last step, or the last stage,
only alarms him because it is so very true. If I may refer once more
to a personal experience, I may say that I for one was never less
troubled by doubts than in the last phase, when I was troubled by
fears. Before that final delay I had been detached and ready to
regard all sorts of doctrines with an open mind. Since that delay has
ended in decision, I have had all sorts of changes in mere mood; and
I think I sympathise with doubts and difficulties more than I did
before. But I had no doubts or difficulties just before. I had only
fears; fears of something that had the finality and simplicity of
suicide. But the more