Now, actual insight or inspiration is best tested by whether it guesses these hidden malformations or surprises.  If our mathematician from the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he might deduce the two shoulder-blades and the two halves of the brain.  But if he guessed that the man’s heart was in the right place, then I should call him something more than a mathematician.  Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to propound for Christianity.  Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical truth.  It not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (if one may say so) exactly where the things go wrong.  Its plan suits the secret irregularities, and expects the unexpected.  It is simple about the simple truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth.  It will admit that a man has two hands, it will not admit (though all the Modernists wail to it) the obvious deduction that he has two hearts.  It is my only purpose in this chapter to point this out; to show that whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth.

I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the effect that such and such a creed cannot be believed in our age.  Of course, anything can be believed in any age.  But, oddly enough, there really is a sense in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can be believed more fixedly in a complex society than in a simple one.  If a man finds Christianity true in Birmingham, he has actually clearer reasons for faith than if he had found it true in Mercia.  For the more complicated seems the coincidence, the less it can be a coincidence.  If snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of the heart of Midlothian, it might be an accident.  But if snowflakes fell in the exact shape of the maze at Hampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle.  It is exactly as of such a miracle that I have since come to feel of the philosophy of Christianity.  The complication of our modern world proves the truth of the creed more perfectly than any of the plain problems of the ages of faith.  It was in Notting Hill and Battersea that I began to see that Christianity was true.  This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distresses those who admire Christianity without believing in it.  When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity of science.  It shows how rich it is in discoveries.  If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it’s elaborately right.  A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident.  But a key and a lock are both complex.  And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key.