The Faith of the Millions (2nd series)

E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Tam, Tom Allen, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
1901
AND SEEING THE MULTITUDES HE WAS MOVED WITH COMPASSION ON THEM, FOR THEY WERE HARASSED AND SCATTERED AS SHEEP HAVING NO SHEPHERD. (Matthew ix. 36.)
Nil Obstat: J. GERARD, S.J. CENS. THEOL. DEPUTATUS.
Imprimatur: HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN, ARCHIEP. WESTMON.
XIII.—Juliana of Norwich XIV.—Poet and Mystic XV.—Two Estimates of Catholic Life XVI.—A Life of De Lamennais XVII.—Lippo, the Man and the Artist XVIII.—Through Art to Faith XIX.—Tracts for the Million XX.—An Apostle of Naturalism XXL.— The Making of Religion XXII.—Adaptability as a Proof of Religion XXIII.—Idealism in Straits
It is, however, not only to these occasional obscurities and ambiguities that we are to ascribe the comparative oblivion into which so remarkable a book has fallen; but also to the fact that its noteworthiness is perhaps more evident and relative to us than to our forefathers. It cannot but startle us to find doubts that we hastily look upon as peculiarly modern, set forth in their full strength and wrestled with and overthrown by an unlettered recluse of the fourteenth century. In some sense they are the doubts of all time, with perhaps just that peculiar complexion which they assume in the light of Christianity. Yet, owing to the modern spread of education, or rather to the indiscriminate divulgation of ideas, these problems are now the possession of the man in the street, whereas in former days they were exclusively the property of minds capable—not indeed of answering the unanswerable, but at least of knowing their own limitations and of seeing why such problems must always exist as long as man is man. Dark as the age of Mother Juliana was as regards the light of positive knowledge and information; yet the light of wisdom burned at least as clearly and steadily then as now; and it is by that light alone that the shades of unbelief can be dispelled. Of course, wisdom without knowledge must starve or prey on its own vitals, and this was the intellectual danger of the middle ages; but knowledge without wisdom is so much food undigested and indigestible, and this is the evil of our own day, when to be passably well-informed so taxes our time and energy as to leave us no leisure for assimilating the knowledge with which we have stuffed ourselves.