The prospects of Christian theology are very difficult to estimate; and I am so convinced myself of the superiority of the Catholic theology based on Neoplatonism, that I cannot view the matter with impartial detachment.  We all tend to predict the triumph of our own opinions.  But miracles must, I am convinced, be relegated to the sphere of pious opinion.  It is not likely, perhaps, that the progress of science will increase the difficulty of believing them; but it can never again be possible to make the truths of religion depend on physical portents having taken place as recorded.  The Christian revelation can stand without them, and the rulers of the Church will soon have to recognise that in very many minds it does stand without them.

I have already indicated what I believe to be the essential parts of that revelation.  Whether it will be believed by a larger number of persons a hundred years hence than to-day depends, I suppose, on whether the nation will be in a more healthy condition than it is now.  The chief rival to Christianity is secularism; and this creed has some bitter disappointments in store for its worshippers.  I cannot help hoping that the human race, having taken in succession every path except the right one, may pay more attention to the narrow way that leadeth unto life.  In morals, the Church will undoubtedly have a hard battle to fight.  The younger generation has discarded all tabus, and in matters of sex we must be prepared for a period of unbridled license.  But such lawlessness brings about its own cure by arousing disgust and shame; and the institution of marriage is far too deeply rooted to be in any danger from the revolution.

I have, I suppose, made it clear that I do not consider myself specially fortunate in having been born in 1860, and that I look forward with great anxiety to the journey through life which my children will have to make.  But, after all, we judge our generation mainly by its surface currents.  There may be in progress a storage of beneficent forces which we cannot see.  There are ages of sowing and ages of reaping:  the brilliant epochs may be those in which spiritual wealth is squandered, the epochs of apparent decline may be those in which the race is recuperating after an exhausting effort.  To all appearance, man has still a great part of his long lease before him, and there is no reason to suppose that the future will be less productive of moral and spiritual triumphs than the past.  The source of all good is like an inexhaustible river; the Creator pours forth new treasures of goodness, truth, and beauty for all who will love them and take them.  ’Nothing that truly is can ever perish,’ as Plotinus says; whatever has value in God’s sight is safe for evermore.  Our half-real world is the factory of souls, in which we are tried, as in a furnace.  We are not to set our hopes upon it, but to learn such wisdom as it can teach us while we pass through it.  I will therefore end these thoughts on our present discontents with two messages of courage and confidence, one from Chaucer, the other from Blake.