Christianity stands firm.  And yet his heart misgives him; for it is not justified by its results.  It is not that the sceptical deny its value:  that those bent on earthly good reject it with open eyes.  The surprise and terror is this:  that those who have found the pearl of price—­who have named and known it—­will still grovel after the lower gain.  Such the Aretine bishop who sent Pompilia back to her tormentor; the friar who refused to save her because he feared the world; the nuns who at first testified to her purity, and were ready to prove her one of dishonest life, when they learned that she possessed riches which by so doing they might confiscate to themselves.

Nor is the fault in humanity at large:  for love and faith have leapt forth profusely in the olden time, at the summons of “unacknowledged,” “uncommissioned” powers of good.  Caponsacchi has shown that they do so still.  Before Paul had spoken and Felix heard, Euripides had pronounced virtue the law of life, and, in his doctrine of hidden forces, foreshadowed the one God.  Euripides felt his way in the darkness.  He, the Pope, walking in the glare of noon, might ask support of him.  Where does the fault lie?  It lies in the excess of certainty—­in the too great familiarity with the truth—­in that encroachment of earthly natives on the heavenly, which is begotten by the security of belief.  Between night and noonday there has been the dawn, with its searching illumination, its thrill of faith, the rapture of self-sacrifice in which anchorite and martyr foretasted the joys of heaven.  Now Christianity is hard because it has become too easy; because of the “ignoble confidence,” which will enjoy this world and yet count upon the next:  the “shallow cowardice,” which renders the old heroism impossible.

The Pope is discursive, as is the manner of his age; and his reflections have been, hitherto, rather suggested by the case before him than directly related to it.  But he grasps it again in a burst of prophetic insight which these very reflections have produced.  Heroism has become impossible,

       “Unless ... what whispers me of times to come? 
       What if it be the mission of that age
       My death will usher into life, to shake
       This torpor of assurance from our creed?” (vol. x. p. 137.)

What if earthquake be about to try the towers which lions dare no longer attack:  if man be destined to live once more, in the new-born readiness for death?  Is the time at hand, when the new faith shall be broken up as the old has been; when reported truth shall once more be compared with the actual truth—­the portrait of the Divine with its reality?  Is not perhaps the Molinist[28] himself thus striving after the higher light?