Now Hodder saw what the little librarian had meant by an authority restored.  The impartial method of modern science had become so firmly established in the mind of mankind by education and reading that the ancient unscientific science of the Roman Empire, in which orthodox Christianity was clothed, no longer carried authority.  In so far as modern science had discovered truth, religion had no quarrel with it.  And if theology pretended to be the science of religion, surely it must submit to the test of the new science!  The dogged clinging to the archaic speculations of apologists, saints, and schoolmen had brought religion to a low ebb indeed.

One of the most inspiring books he read was by an English clergyman of his own Church whom he had formerly looked upon as a heretic, with all that the word had once implied.  It was a frank yet reverent study of the self-consciousness of Christ, submitting the life and teachings of Jesus to modern criticism and the scientific method.  And the Saviour’s divinity, rather than being lessened, was augmented.  Hodder found it infinitely refreshing that the so-called articles of Christian belief, instead of being put first and their acceptance insisted upon, were made the climax of the investigation.

Religion, he began to perceive, was an undertaking, are attempt to find unity and harmony of the soul by adopting, after mature thought, a definite principle in life.  If harmony resulted,—­if the principle worked, it was true.  Hodder kept an open mind, but he became a pragmatist so far.  Science, on the other hand, was in a sphere by herself, and need have no conflict with religion; science was not an undertaking, but an impartial investigation by close observation of facts in nature.  Her object was to discover truths by these methods alone.  She had her theories, indeed, but they must be submitted to rigorous tests.  This from a book by Professor Perry, an advocate of the new realism.

On the other hand there were signs that modern science, by infinitesimal degrees, might be aiding in the solution of the Mystery . . . .

But religion, Hodder saw, was trusting.  Not credulous, silly trusting, but thoughtful trusting, accepting such facts as were definitely known.  Faith was trusting.  And faith without works was dead simply because there could be no faith without works.  There was no such thing as belief that did not result in act.

A paragraph which made a profound impression on Hodder at that time occurs in James’s essay, “Is life worth living?”

“Now-what do I mean by I trusting?  Is the word to carry with it license to define in detail an invisible world, and to authorize and excommunicate those whose trust is different? . .  Our faculties of belief were not given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal; they were given us to live by.  And to trust our religions demands men first of all to live in the light of them, and to act as if the invisible world which they suggest were real.  It is a fact of human nature that man can live and die by the help of a sort of faith that goes without a single dogma and definition.”