we may be unwilling to go to the lions.  Our time has its own trial—­by no means unexacting let me tell you—­but we quietly slip it by:  it is much easier to revile the infidel.  This as a test of loyalty should be pinned:  we shall shut up thereby the hypocrite.  And the earnest man, more conscious of his own burden, will be more sympathetic, generous and just, and will come to be more logical and to see what Newman well remarked, that one who asks questions shows he has no belief and in asking may be but on the road to one.  If to ask a question is to express a doubt, it is no less, perhaps, to seek a way out of it.  “What better can he do than inquire, if he is in doubt?” asks Newman.  “Not to inquire is in his case to be satisfied with disbelief.”  We should, acting in this light, instead of denouncing the questioner, answer his question freely and frankly, encourage him to ask others and put him one or two by the way.  Men meeting in this manner may still remain on opposite sides, but there will be formed between them a bond of sympathy that mutual sincerity can never fail to establish.  This is freedom, and a fine beautiful thing, surely worth a fine effort.  What we have grown accustomed to, the bitterness, the recriminations, the persecutions and retaliations, are all the evil weeds of prejudice, growing around our principles and choking them.  They are so far a denial of principle, a proof of mental slavery.  Our freedom will attest to faith:  “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty.”

VIII

This, in conclusion, is the root of the matter:  to claim freedom and to allow it in like measure; rather than to deny, to urge men to follow their beliefs:  only thus can they find salvation.  To constrain a man to profess what we profess is worse than delusion:  should he give lip service to what he does not hold at heart, ’twere for him deceitful and for us dangerous.  Where his star calls, let him walk sincerely.  If his creed is insufficient or inconsistent, in his struggle he shall test it, and in his sincerity he must make up the insufficiency or remove the inconsistency.  This is the only course for honourable men and no man should object.  To repeat, it puts an equal burden on all—­the onus of justifying the faith that is in them.  Life is a divine adventure and he whose faith is finest, firmest and clearest will go farthest.  God does not hold his honours for the timid:  the man who buried his talent, fearing to lose it, was cast into exterior darkness.  He who will step forward fearlessly will be justified.  “All things are possible to him who believeth.”  Many on both sides may be surprised to find suddenly proposed as a test to both sides the readiness to adventure bravely on the Sea of Life.  The free-thinker may be astonished to hear, not that he goes too far, but does not go far enough.  He may gasp at the test, but it is in effect the test and the only true