A Man!—a right true man, however,
Whose work was worthy a man’s endeavour. (ll. 876-877.)
Moreover
Was he not surely the first to insist on
The natural sovereignty of our race? (ll. 888-889.)
As it were in startling comment upon the assertion of this natural sovereignty, the Professor’s further speech is interrupted by a fit of coughing, and the listener avails himself of the opportunity thus offered to leave the Hall.
Once more free to breathe the outer air his critical powers reassert themselves, and he sees from a point of observation, sufficiently removed, the relative effects of the excesses of the most widely differing forms of Christianity and of that form of belief or of scepticism which denies the divinity of the founder of the creed. His decision is given in favour of superstition as opposed to scepticism.
Truth’s atmosphere may grow mephitic
When Papist struggles with Dissenter,
·······
Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,
May poison it for healthy breathing—
But the Critic leaves no air to poison. (ll. 898-909.)
Then follows the criticism of the Critic.
What has the lecturer, indeed, left to the followers of the Christ?
(1) Intellect? Is the possession of pure intellect to be accounted cause for worship? Even so, others have taught morality as Christ taught it, with the difference (and this surely an advantage from the critic’s standpoint) that these teachers have failed to assert of themselves that to which Christ laid claim on his own behalf: that,
He, the sage and humble,
Was also one with the Creator. (ll. 922-923.)