d creatures he has
made. But still under the influence of that faithless hunger for
intellectual certainty, they look about and divide into two parties: both
would gladly receive the reported revelation in Jesus, the one if they
could have evidence enough from without, the other if they could only get
rid of the difficulties it raises within. I am aware that I distinguish
in the mass, and that both sides would be found more or less influenced
by the same difficulties--but _more_ and _less_, and therefore thus
classified by the driving predominance. Those of the one party, then,
finding no proof to be had but that in testimony, and anxious to have all
they can--delighting too in a certain holy wilfulness of intellectual
self-immolation, accept the testimony in the mass, and become Roman
Catholics. Nor is it difficult to see how they then find rest. It is not
the dogma, but the contact with Christ the truth, with Christ the man,
which the dogma, in pacifying the troubles of the intellect--if only by a
soporific, has aided them in reaching, that gives them peace: it is the
truth itself that makes them free.

The worshippers of science will themselves allow, that when they cannot
gain observations enough to satisfy them upon any point in which a law of
nature is involved, they must, if possible, institute experiments. I say
therefore to those whose observation has not satisfied them concerning
the phenomenon Christianity,--"Where is your experiment? Why do you not
thus try the utterance claiming to be the law of life? Call it a
hypothesis, and experiment upon it. Carry into practice, well justified
of your conscience, the words which the Man spoke, for therein he says
himself lies the possibility of your acceptance of his mission; and if,
after reasonable time thus spent, you are not yet convinced enough to
give testimony--I will not annoy you by saying _to facts_, but--to
conviction, I think neither will you be ready to abandon the continuous
experiment." These Roman Catholics have thus met with Jesus, come into
personal contact with him: by the doing of what he tells us, and by
nothing else, are they blessed. What if their theories show to me like a
burning of the temple and a looking for the god in the ashes? They know
in whom they have believed. And if some of us think we have a more
excellent way, we shall be blessed indeed if the result be no less
excellent than in such men as Faber, Newman, and Aubrey de Vere. No man