nd that the
self-slayer in exaltation fell within the line, the self-slayer
in sadness just beyond it. The Christian feeling evidently
was not merely that the suicide was carrying martyrdom too far.
The Christian feeling was furiously for one and furiously against
the other: these two things that looked so much alike were at
opposite ends of heaven and hell. One man flung away his life;
he was so good that his dry bones could heal cities in pestilence.
Another man flung away life; he was so bad that his bones would
pollute his brethren's. I am not saying this fierceness was right;
but why was it so fierce?

Here it was that I first found that my wandering feet were
in some beaten track. Christianity had also felt this opposition
of the martyr to the suicide: had it perhaps felt it for the
same reason? Had Christianity felt what I felt, but could not
(and cannot) express--this need for a first loyalty to things,
and then for a ruinous reform of things? Then I remembered
that it was actually the charge against Christianity that it
combined these two things which I was wildly trying to combine.
Christianity was accused, at one and the same time, of being
too optimistic about the universe and of being too pessimistic
about the world. The coincidence made me suddenly stand still.

An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying
that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot
be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible
in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth.
You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed
on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well
say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three,
but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe
depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century.
If a man believes in unalterable natural law, he cannot believe
in any miracle in any age. If a man believes in a will behind law,
he can believe in any miracle in any age. Suppose, for the sake
of argument, we are concerned with a case of thaumaturgic healing.
A materialist of the twelfth century could not believe it any more
than a materialist of the twentieth century. But a Christian
Scientist of the twentieth century can believe it as much as a
Christian of the twelfth century. It is simply a matter of a man's
theory of things. Therefore in dealing with any hist