Therewith the whole position of the conforming sceptic is changed.  If a professional religious has any justification at all for his professionalism it is surely that he proclaims the nearness and greatness of God.  And these creeds and articles and orthodoxies are not proclamations but curtains, they are a darkening and confusion of what should be crystal clear.  What compensatory good can a priest pretend to do when his primary business is the truth and his method a lie?  The oaths and incidental conformities of men who wish to serve God in the state are on a different footing altogether from the falsehood and mischief of one who knows the true God and yet recites to a trustful congregation, foists upon a trustful congregation, a misleading and ill-phrased Levantine creed.

Such is the line of thought which will impose the renunciation of his temporalities and a complete cessation of services upon every ordained priest and minister as his first act of faith.  Once that he has truly realised God, it becomes impossible for him ever to repeat his creed again.  His course seems plain and clear.  It becomes him to stand up before the flock he has led in error, and to proclaim the being and nature of the one true God.  He must be explicit to the utmost of his powers.  Then he may await his expulsion.  It may be doubted whether it is sufficient for him to go away silently, making false excuses or none at all for his retreat.  He has to atone for the implicit acquiescences of his conforming years.

10.  The universalism of god

Are any sorts of people shut off as if by inherent necessity from God?

This is, so to speak, one of the standing questions of theology; it reappears with slight changes of form at every period of religious interest, it is for example the chief issue between the Arminian and the Calvinist.  From its very opening proposition modern religion sweeps past and far ahead of the old Arminian teachings of Wesleyans and Methodists, in its insistence upon the entirely finite nature of God.  Arminians seem merely to have insisted that God has conditioned himself, and by his own free act left men free to accept or reject salvation.  To the realist type of mind—­here as always I use “realist” in its proper sense as the opposite of nominalist—­to the old-fashioned, over-exact and over-accentuating type of mind, such ways of thinking seem vague and unsatisfying.  Just as it distresses the more downright kind of intelligence with a feeling of disloyalty to admit that God is not Almighty, so it troubles the same sort of intelligence to hear that there is no clear line to be drawn between the saved and the lost.  Realists like an exclusive flavour in their faith.  Moreover, it is a natural weakness of humanity to be forced into extreme positions by argument.  It is probable, as I have already suggested, that the absolute attributes of God were forced upon Christianity under the stresses of propaganda, and it is probable that the theory of a super-human obstinancy beyond salvation arose out of the irritations natural to theological debate.  It is but a step from the realisation that there are people absolutely unable or absolutely unwilling to see God as we see him, to the conviction that they are therefore shut off from God by an invincible soul blindness.