t
is a mere figment of the brain." John replies: "You are incapable of
judging: you are spiritually blind." Thomas says: "My friend, you are
incapable of reasoning: you are mentally halt and lame." John says
Thomas is a "fellow of no delicacy."

I think there is much to be said in excuse for Thomas. I think it is
rather cool of John to invent a faculty of "spiritual discernment," and
then to tell Thomas that he (Thomas) does not possess that faculty.

That is how Archdeacon Wilson uses me. In a sermon at Rochdale he is
reported to have spoken as follows:

As regards the first axiom, the archdeacon reaffirmed his
declaration as to Mr. Blatchford's disqualification for such
a controversy... Whether Mr. Blatchford recognised the fact
or not, it was true that there was a faculty among men which,
in its developed state, was as distinct, as unequally distributed,
as mysterious in its origin and in its distribution, as was
the faculty for pure mathematics, for music, for metaphysics,
or for research. They might call it the devotional or religious
faculty. Just as there were men whose faculties of insight
amounted to genius in other regions of mental activity, so
there were spiritual geniuses, geniuses in the region in which
man holds communion with God, and from this region these who
had never developed the faculty were debarred. One who was
not devotional, not humble, not gentle in his treatment of
the beliefs of others, one who could lightly ridicule the
elementary forms of belief which had corresponded to the
lower stages of culture, past and present, was not likely
to do good in a religious controversy.

Here is the tyranny of language, indeed! Here is a farrago of myths and
symbols. "There is a faculty--we may call it the devotional or religious
faculty--there are geniuses in the region in which man holds communion
with God"!

Why the good archdeacon talks of the "region in which man holds
communion with God" as if he were talking of the telephone exchange.
He talks of God as if he were talking of the Postmaster-General. He
postulates a God, and he postulates a region, and he postulates a
communication, and then talks about all these postulates as if they were
facts. I protest against this mystical, transcendental rhetoric. It is
not argument.

Who has seen God? Who has entered that "region"? Who has communicated
with God