oth sides may be surprised to find suddenly
proposed as a test to both sides the readiness to adventure bravely on
the Sea of Life. The free-thinker may be astonished to hear, not that he
goes too far, but does not go far enough. He may gasp at the test, but
it is in effect the test and the only true one. The man who does not
believe he is to be blotted out when his body ceases to breathe, who
holds all history for his heritage and the wide present for his
battle-ground, believes also the future is no repellent void but a
widening and alluring world. If in his travel he is scrupulous in
detail, it is in the spirit of the mariner who will neither court a
ship-wreck nor be denied his adventure. He cannot deny to others the
right to hesitate and halt by the way, but his spirit asks no less than
the eternal and the infinite. Yes, but many good religious people are
not used to seeing the issue in this light, and those who make a trade
of fanning old bitterness will still ply their bitter trade, crying that
anarchists, atheists, heretics, infidels, all outcasts and wicked men,
are all rampant for our destruction. It may be disputed, but, admitting
it, one may ask: Is there no place among Christian people for those
distinctive virtues on which we base the superiority of our religion?
When the need is greatest, should the practice be less urgent? It is not
evident that the free-thinker is obliged by any of his principles to
give better example. It is evident the Christian is so obliged. Why is
he found wanting? If human weakness were pleaded, one could understand.
It is against the making a virtue of it lies the protest. How many noble
things there are in our philosophies, and how little practised. No
violent convulsions should be needed to make us free, if men were but
consistent: we should find ourselves wakening from a wicked dream in a
bloodless and beautiful revolution. We are in the desert truly and a
long way from the Promised Land. But we must get to the higher ground
and consider our position; and if one by one we are stripped of the
prejudices that too long have usurped the place of faith, and we find
ourselves, to our dismay, perhaps lacking that faith that we have so
long shouted but so little testified, and tremble on the verge of panic,
there is one last line that gives in four words with divine simplicity
and completeness a final answer to all timidity and objections: "Fear
not; only believe."
CHAPTER XIV
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