All, then, that I am trying to make evident is this—­and this must be sufficient for us—­not that theism, with its attendant doctrines, presents us with no difficulties, necessitates no baffling contradictions in terms, and confronts us with no terrible and piteous spectacles, but that all this is not peculiar to theism.  It is not the price we pay for rising from morality to religion.  It is the price we pay for rising from the natural to the supernatural.  Once double the sum of things by adding this second world to it, and it swells to such a size that our reason can no longer encircle it.  We are torn this way and that by convictions, each of which is equally necessary, but each of which excludes the others.  When we try to grasp them all at once, our mind is like a man tied to wild horses; or like Phaeton in the Sun’s chariot, bewildered and powerless over the intractable and the terrible team.  We can only recover our strength by a full confession of our weakness.  We can only lay hold on the beliefs that we see to be needful, by asking faith to join hands with reason.  If we refuse to do this, there is but one alternative.  Without faith we can perhaps explain things if we will; but we must first make them not worth explaining.  We can only think them out entirely by regarding them as something not worth thinking out at all.

CHAPTER XI.

THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION.

’The scandal of the pious Christian, and the fallacious triumph of the infidel, should cease as soon as they recollect not only by whom, but likewise to whom, the Divine Revelation was given.’—­Gibbon.[37]

And now let us suppose ourselves convinced, at least for the sake of argument, that man will always believe in himself as a moral being, and that he will, under no compulsion, let this belief go.  Granting this, from what we have just seen, thus much will be plain to us, that theism, should it ever tend to reassert itself, can have no check to fear at the hands of positive thought.  Let us, therefore, suppose further, that such a revival of faith is imminent, and that the enlightened world, with its eyes wide open, is about to turn once again to religious desires and aims.  This brings us face to face with the second question, that we have not as yet touched upon:  will the religion thus turned to be a natural religion only, or is it possible that some exclusive dogmatism may be recognised as a supernatural re-statement of it?

Before going further with this question it will be well to say a few words as to the exact position it occupies.  This, with regard to the needs of man, is somewhat different to the position of natural theism.  That a natural theism is essential to man’s moral being is a proposition that can be more or less rigidly demonstrated; but that a revelation is essential as a supplement to natural theism can be impressed upon