“Yes,” said Gildea, “he says so; and he adds elsewhere that ‘atheism is one sense the grossest of anthropomorphisms. The atheist sees justly that God does not act in this world after the manner of man; hence he concludes that he does not exist; he would believe if he beheld a miracle—in other words, if God acted as a finite force with a determinate object in view.’”
“That is good,” said Maddock, “I did not give Renan credit for saying such a thing.”
“No,” said Gildea, “you have never got much further in Biblical criticism than the Germans. Strauss satisfies you as the great Against, and poor Westcott as the gigantic For!”
They both laughed.
“Come, come,” said Maddock, “you must not poke fun at me!”
“It is impossible,” Gildea answered, “to poke fun at an ecclesiastic who calls Heine ‘a great poet and brilliant philosopher.’”
“Ah, you have been reading my last polemic, I see?—Yes, you must have been reading it; for no newspaper man would ever think of quoting an opinion like that.”
“I have been reading it with admiration and wonder: admiration at its excellence as polemical work, and wonder that you should take the trouble to castigate a production which you yourself declare to be, as a contribution to theological knowledge, utterly useless.”
“Yes, but did I not explain myself? The book is fundamentally vicious. It confirms the shallow heterodox in their heterodoxy, the shallow orthodox in their orthodoxy. It gives forth light to no one and darkness to everyone. Progress in foolishness and stupidity, that is all that it signalises; the foolishness of ‘go-aheadism,’ the stupidity of re-action. I have no patience with a man of presumable intelligence who could write such a book.”
“But do you not think that your attack on it will only, by bringing it into public notice, increase its powers of mischief?”