uffer detriment by the
discarding of a few fabulous tales; nor did he fear lest his own faith
should become undermined by his studies. For he had that in him which
told him that God was; and this instinctive certainty would persist, he
believed, though he had ultimately to admit the whole fabric of
Christianity to be based on the Arimathean's dream. It had already
survived the rejection of externals: the surrender of forms, the
assurance that ceremonials were not essential to salvation belonged to
his early student-days. Now, he determined to send by the board the
last hampering relics of bigotry and ritual. He could no longer concede
the tenets of election and damnation. God was a God of mercy, not the
blind, jealous Jahveh of the Jews, or the inhuman Sabbatarian of a
narrow Protestantism. And He might be worshipped anywhere or anyhow: in
any temple built to His name--in the wilderness under the open sky--in
silent prayer, or according to any creed.

In all this critical readjustment, the thought he had to spare for his
fellow-men was of small account: his fate was not bound to theirs by
the altruism of a later generation. It was a time of intense
individualism; and his efforts towards spiritual emancipation were made
on his own behalf alone. The one link he had with his fellows--if link
it could be termed--was his earnest wish to avoid giving offence: never
would it have occurred to him to noise his heterodoxy abroad. Nor did
he want to disturb other people's convictions. He respected those who
could still draw support from the old faith, and, moreover, had not a
particle of the proselytiser in him. He held that religion was either a
matter of temperament, or of geographical distribution; felt tolerantly
inclined towards the Jews, and the Chinese; and did not even smile at
processions to the Joss-house, and the provisioning of those silent
ones who needed food no more.

But just as little as he intermeddled with the convictions of others
would he brook interference with his own. It was the concern of no
third person what paths he followed in his journeyings after the
truth--in his quest for a panacea for the ills and delusions of life.
For, call it what he would--Biblical criticism, scientific
inquiry--this was his aim first and last. He was trying to pierce the
secret of existence--to rede the riddle that has never been
solved.--What am I? Whence have I come? Whither am I going? What
meaning has the pain I suffer,