Now it is the gradual decay of this support—of this non-rational yet most reasonable cause of belief, that is rendering the religious condition of the man in the street so increasingly unsatisfactory. Not only is there no longer an agreement of experts, and a consequent consensus of nations, touching the broad and fundamental truths of Christianity, but what is far more to the point, the knowledge of this Babylonian confusion has become a commonplace with the multitudes. No doubt there are yet some shaded patches where the dew still struggles with the desiccating sun—old-world sanctuaries of Catholicism whose dwellers hardly realize the existence of unbelief or heresy, or who give at best a lazy, notional assent to the fact. But there are few regions in so-called Christendom where the least educated are not now quite aware that Christianity is but one of many religions in a much larger world than their forefathers were aware of; that the intellect of modern, unlike that of mediæval Europe, is largely hostile to its claims; that its defenders are infinitely at variance with one another; that there is no longer any social disgrace connected with a non-profession of Christianity; in a word, that the public opinion of the modern world has ceased to be Christian, and that the once all-dominating religion which blocked out the serious consideration of any other claimant, bids fair to be speedily reduced to its primitive helplessness and insignificance. The disintegrating effect of such knowledge on the faith of the masses must be, and manifestly is, simply enormous. Not that there is any rival consensus and authority to take the place of dethroned Catholicism. Even scepticism is too little organized and embodied, too chaotic in its infinite variety of contradictory positions, to create an influential consensus of any positive kind against faith. Its effect, as far as the unthinking masses are concerned, is simply to destroy the chief extrinsic support of their faith and to throw them back on the less regular, less reliable causes of belief. If in addition it teaches them a few catchwords of free-thought, a few smart blasphemies and syllogistic impertinences, this is of less consequence than at first sight appears, since these are attempted after-justifications, and no real causes of their unbelief. For they love the parade of formal reason, as they love big words or technical terms, or a smattering of French or Latin, with all the delight of a child in the mysterious and unfamiliar; but their pretence to be ruled by it is mere affectation, and the tenacity with which they cling to their arguments is rather the tenacity of blind faith in a dogma, than of clear insight into principles.
And this brings us to the problem which gave birth to the present essay.
The growing infection of the uneducated or slightly educated masses of the Catholic laity with the virus of prevalent unbelief is arousing the attention of a few of our clergy to the need of coping with what is to them a new kind of difficulty. Amongst other kindred suggestions, is that of providing tracts for the million dealing not as heretofore with the Protestant, but with the infidel controversy. While the danger was more limited and remote it was felt that, more harm than good would come of giving prominence in the popular mind to the fact and existence of so much unbelief; that in many minds doubts unfelt before would be awakened; that difficulties lay on the surface and were the progeny of shallow-mindedness, whereas the solutions lay deeper down than the vulgar mind could reasonably be expected to go; that on the whole it was better that the few should suffer, than that the many should be disturbed. The docile and obedient could be kept away from contagion, or if infected, could be easily cured by an act of blind confidence in the Church; while the disobedient would go their own way in any case. Hence the idea of entering into controversy with those incompetent to deal with such matters was wisely set aside. But now that the prevalence and growth of unbelief is as evident as the sun at noon—now that it is no longer only the recalcitrant and irreligious, but even the religious and docile-minded who are disturbed by the fact, it seems to some that, a policy of silence and inactivity may be far more fruitful in evil than in good, that reverent reserve must be laid aside and the pearls of truth cast into the trough of popular controversy.
But to this course an almost insuperable objection presents itself at first seeming. Seeing that, the true cause of doubt and unbelief in the uncritical, is to be sought for proximately in the decay of a popular consensus in favour of belief, and ultimately in the disagreements and negations of those who lead and form public opinion, and in no wise in the reasons which they allege when they attempt a criticism that is beyond them; what will it profit to deal with the apparent cause if we cannot strike at the real cause? In practical matters, the reasons men give for their conduct, to themselves as well as to others, are often untrue, never exhaustive. Hence to refute their reasons will not alter their intentions. To dispel the sophisms assigned by the uneducated as the basis of their unbelief, is not really to strike at the root of the matter at all. Besides which, the work is endless; for if they are released from one snare they will be as easily re-entangled in the next; and indeed what can such controversy do but foster in them the false notion that, belief in possession may be dispossessed by every passing difficulty, and that their faith is to be dependent on an intellectual completeness of which they are for ever incapable. Indeed the unavoidable amount of controversy of all kinds, dinned into the ears of the faithful in a country like this, favours a fallacy of intellectualism very prejudicial to the repose of a living faith founded on concrete reasons, more or less experimental.
As far as the many are concerned, much the same difficulty attends the preservation of their faith in these days, as attended its creation in the beginnings of Christianity, before the little flock had grown into a kingdom, when the intellect and power of the world was arrayed against it, when it had neither the force of a world-wide consensus nor the voice of public authority in its favour. In those days it was not by the "persuasive words of human wisdom" that the crowds were gained over to Christ, but by a certain ostensio virtutis, by an experimental and not merely by a rational proof of the Gospel—a proof which, if it admitted of any kind of formulation, did not compel them in virtue of the logicality of its form. Further, when the conditions and helps needed by the Church in her infancy, gave way to those belonging to her established strength, it was by her ascendency over the strong, the wealthy, and the learned, that she secured for the crowd,—for the weak and the poor and the ignorant,—the most necessary support of a Christianized, international public opinion, and thereby extended the benefit of her educative influence to those millions whom disinclination or weakness would otherwise have deterred from the profession and practice of the faith.
If the Church of to-day is to retain her hold of the crowd in modernized or modernizing countries, it must either be by renewing her ascendency over those who form and modify public opinion, who even in the purest democracy are ever the few and not the many; or else by a reversion to the methods of primitive times, by some palpable argument that speaks as clearly to the simplest as to the subtlest, if only the heart be right. An outburst of miracle-working and prophecy is hardly to be looked for; while the argument from the tree's fruits, or from the moral miracle, is at present weakened by the extent to which non-Christians put in practice the morality they have learnt from Christ. Other non-rational causes of belief draw individuals, but they do not draw crowds.
If we cannot see very clearly what is to supply for the support once given to the faith of the millions by public opinion, still their incapacity for dealing with the question on rational grounds will not justify us altogether in silence. For in the first place it is an incapacity of which they are not aware, or which at least they are very unwilling to admit. A candidate at the hustings would run a poor chance of a hearing who, instead of seeming to appeal to the reason of the mob should, in the truthfulness of his soul, try to convince them of their utter incompetence to judge the simplest political point. Again, though unable to decide between cause and cause, yet the rudest can often see that there is much to be said on both sides—though what, he does not understand; and if this fact weakens his confidence in the right, it also weakens it in the wrong; whereas had the right been silent, the wrong, in his judgment, would thereby have been proved victorious. This will justify us at times in talking over the heads of our readers and hearers, and in not sparing sonorous polysyllables, abstruse technicalities, or even the pompous parade of syllogistic arguments with all their unsightly joints sticking out for public admiration. Some hands may be too delicate for this coarse work; but there will always be those to whom it is easy and congenial; and its utility is too evident to allow a mere question of taste to stand in the way.
Moreover, it must be remembered that while many of the class referred to are glad to be free from the pressure of a Christianized public opinion, and are only too willing to grasp at any semblance of a reason for unbelief; others, more religiously disposed, are really troubled by these popular, anti-Christian difficulties, the more so as they are often infected with the fallacy, fostered by ceaseless controversy, which makes one's faith dependent on the formal reason one can give for it.
Though this is not so, yet moral truthfulness forbids us to assent to what we, however falsely, believe to be untrue. Hence while the virtue of faith remains untouched, its exercise with regard to particular points may be inculpably suspended through ignorance, stupidity, misinformation, and other causes.
In the interest of these well-disposed but easily puzzled believers of the ill-instructed and uncritical sort, a series of anti-agnostic tracts for the million would really seem to be called for. Yet never has the present writer felt more abjectly crushed with a sense of incompetence than when posed by the difficulties of a "hagnostic" greengrocer, or of a dressmaker fresh from the perusal of "Erbert" Spencer. Face to face with chaos, one knows not where to begin the work of building up an orderly mind; nor will the self-taught genius brook a hint of possible ignorance, or endure the discussion of dull presuppositions, without much pawing of the ground and champing on the bit: "What I want," he says, "is a plain answer to a plain question." And when you explain to him that for an answer he must go back very far and become a little child again, and must unravel his mind to the very beginning like an ill-knit stocking, he looks at once incredulous and triumphant as who should say: "There, I told you so!" Yet the same critical incompetence that makes these simple folk quite obtuse to the true and adequate solution of their problems (I am speaking of cases where such solutions are possible), makes them perfectly ready to accept any sort of counter-sophistry or paralogism. A most excellent and genuine "convert" of that class told me that he had stood out for years against the worship of the Blessed Virgin, till one day it had occurred to him that, as a cause equals or exceeds its effect, so the Mother must equal the Son. Another, equally genuine, professed to have been conquered by the reflection that he had all his life been saying: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," and he could not see the use of believing in it if he didn't belong to it. If their faith in Catholicism or in any other religion depended on their logic, men of this widespread class were in a sorry plight. Like many of their betters, these two men probably imagined the assigned reasons to be the entire cause of their conversion, making no account of the many reasonable though non-logical motives by which the change was really brought about. Hence to have abruptly and incautiously corrected them, would perhaps but have been to reduce them to confusion and perplexity, and to "destroy with one's logic those for whom Christ died."