I should have been debarred by “selfish interests” from making candid inquiry, or that I should have been biassed by “sordid motives.”  I hope that even such a fragment of moral sense as may remain in an ecclesiastical “infidel” might have got me through the difficulty; but it would be unworthy to deny, or disguise, the fact that a very serious difficulty must have been created for me by the nature of my tenure.  And let it be observed that the temptation, in my case, would have been far slighter than in that of a professor of theology; whatever biological doctrine I had repudiated, nobody I cared for would have thought the worse of me for so doing.  No scientific journals would have howled me down, as the religious newspapers howled down my too honest friend, the late Bishop of Natal; nor would my colleagues of the Royal Society have turned their backs upon me, as his episcopal colleagues boycotted him.

I say these facts are obvious, and that it is wholesome and needful that they should be stated.  It is in the interests of theology, if it be a science, and it is in the interests of those teachers of theology who desire to be something better than counsel for creeds, that it should be taken to heart.  The seeker after theological truth and that only, will no more suppose that I have insulted him, than the prisoner who works in fetters will try to pick a quarrel with me, if I suggest that he would get on better if the fetters were knocked off:  unless indeed, as it is said does happen in the course of long captivities, that the victim at length ceases to feel the weight of his chains, or even takes to hugging them, as if they were honourable ornaments.[100]

FOOTNOTES: 

     [81] The substance of a paragraph which precedes this has
          been transferred to the Prologue.

     [82] I confess that, long ago, I once or twice made this
          mistake; even to the waste of a capital ‘U.’ 1893.

     [83] “Let us maintain, before we have proved.  This seeming
          paradox is the secret of happiness” (Dr. Newman:  Tract
          85, p. 85).

     [84] Dr. Newman, Essay on Development, p. 357.

     [85] It is by no means to be assumed that “spiritual” and
          “corporeal” are exact equivalents of “immaterial” and
          “material” in the minds of ancient speculators on
          these topics.  The “spiritual body” of the risen dead
          (1 Cor. xv.) is not the “natural” “flesh and blood”
          body.  Paul does not teach the resurrection of the body
          in the ordinary sense of the word “body”; a fact,
          often overlooked, but pregnant with many consequences.

     [86] Tertullian (Apolog.  Adv.  Gentes, cap. xxiii) thus
          challenges the Roman authorities:  let them bring a
          possessed person into the presence of a Christian
          before their tribunal, and if the demon does not
          confess himself to be such, on the order of the
          Christian, let the Christian be executed out of hand.