The recognition of it straightway opens wide the door to hope and
love; and such persons are, as we fancy they always will be, the
nucleus of a Church. Their particular phase of doubt, of philosophic
uncertainty, has been the secret of millions of good Christians,
multitudes of worthy priests. They knit themselves to believers, in
various degrees, of all ages. As against the purely negative action
of the scientific spirit, the high-pitched Grey, the theistic
Elsmere, the "ritualistic priest," the quaint Methodist Fleming, both
so admirably sketched, present [69] perhaps no unconquerable
differences. The question of the day is not between one and another
of these, but in another sort of opposition, well defined by Mrs.
Ward herself, between--
"Two estimates of life--the estimate which is the offspring of the
scientific spirit, and which is for ever making the visible world
fairer and more desirable in mortal eyes; and the estimate of Saint
Augustine."
To us, the belief in God, in goodness at all, in the story of
Bethlehem, does not rest on evidence so diverse in character and
force as Mrs. Ward supposes. At his death Elsmere has started what
to us would be a most unattractive place of worship, where he
preaches an admirable sermon on the purely human aspect of the life
of Christ.
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