“When a man speaks publicly of such a grave matter as religion,” said Maddock, “he should not be careless, he should not be superficial! We have a right to demand of those who make explosives, that they, at any rate, do not smoke in the magazine.”
“True; but, if we all got our deserts, who, you know, should escape whipping? Certainly not the producers of orthodox religious literature.”—(The Doctor, after a pause, assented as before).—“Well, we will proceed further against our good Judge, and say that his appreciation of what is, as he says, ‘good and ennobling’ is ludicrously inadequate. What can be said of a man who seriously speaks of Jesus, ‘when, in the garden of Gethsemane, he went apart and prayed, three times over, the same prayer to God, within a short period,’—of Jesus thus ‘doing that which he told his disciples not to do—“use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do,” for the reason that your heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him.’ Habemus confitentem asinum! We can only burst out laughing: a reply to such a statement is impossible! The lawyer’s habit of thought is at its apogee, and (as Heine says) ‘Gegen die Dummheit kämpfen wir Götter selbst vergebens.’—Against stupidity the very gods themselves struggle in vain.” The Doctor assented smiling.
“And statements similar to this are not scarce here. Our good Judge, then, has not, it is clear, much experience of the spiritual life, of those who live in the spirit. The ‘sudden conversion of Paul,’ for instance, strikes him as one of the (it is supposed) ‘improbabilities so forcible that no sane thinking man or woman can accept’ the inspiration of the Scriptures which relate them. Now, any one who knows anything of human nature other than that of ‘persons of ordinary common-sense,’ knows that such ‘sudden conversions’ are not only not improbable, but passably frequent. In some cases, as in that of Staniforth, quoted by Arnold in his ‘St. Paul and Protestantism,’ the circumstances approach so closely to those of Paul’s that we are enabled to assign to them a definite place in the science of psychology. Nor are our good Judge’s ‘errors,’ as you say, exhausted yet. We have still to bring against him the charge of, what Celsus calls, κουφοτης, and Arnold translates ‘want of intellectual seriousness.’ So confused and incoherent is his knowledge of the real position that the secular biblical critic takes up, that he absolutely calls the position taken up by the orthodox biblical critic (that is to say, biblical critics who are orthodox; as, for instance, you yourself, my dear Doctor): he absolutely calls this position critically ‘untenable,’ not perceiving that it is his own only differing in degree!—This is simply appalling! The κουφοτης of the Secularists is not a whit better, after all, than that of the Christians!”
“Yes,” said Maddock, disregarding the last remark, “but then you must remember that the Judge ‘does not intend to resort to any process of subtle argument, nor to make any display of scholastic knowledge, nor to indulge in learned disquisitions.’ He merely writes ‘popular, clear, and simple’ nonsense for ‘the doubter who is trying to grope his way to the light, but cannot; to the Atheist who believes in nothing, neither in a Supreme Power, nor in a future life.’ And your secular ingratitude to him, Sir Horace, strikes me, I must confess, as keener-toothed than the winter wind of orthodoxy!”
“Doctor,” said Sir Horace, “you are poking fun at me! But I, who am, as Shelley said of himself ‘rather serious’—I proceed in my examination, whose sole confirmation as truth I find in your words or gestures of approval. You will, I hope, forgive me for any repetition I may make of your own criticism, as a master should a humble disciple? It is only a proof of attention and admiration.”
“Go on,” said Maddock, “mocker!”
“All these faults, then, which we have remarked in our good Judge—his polemically; his ignorance of the grammar (or, perhaps, as your Reply says, the alphabet) of historical criticism; his ludicrously inadequate conception of the good and the ennobling, of the spiritual calibre of such men as, for instance, St. Paul; his superficial acquaintance with the data of the subject of which it is treating; and, finally, his κουφοτης, his want of intellectual seriousness—all these faults, are we not agreed, are the faults of the average intelligent secular view, in its negative consideration of Christian Theology? The question that now arises is, has this view nothing but faults?—has it no excellencies? Does there remain, after the attack on it of so admirable a theological polemist as Dr. Maddock is, no residuum of real and vital truth? Let us try and see.—To begin with, did we not find that, despite a contradiction, our good Judge perceived the reality of, what you so finely call, the development of divine Truth?—
“Yet I doubt not thro’ the ages one increasing purpose runs,
and the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”