“No, you have just been dreaming dreams.”
“But why should one not see?”
“See! The things of the spirit. These symbols as realities! These metaphors as men walking!”
“You talk like an agnostic.”
“We are all agnostics. Our creeds are expressions of ourselves and our attitude and relationship to the unknown. The triune God is just the form of our need and disposition. I have always assumed that you took that for granted. Who has ever really seen or heard or felt God? God is neither of the senses nor of the mind; he is of the soul. You are realistic, you are materialistic....”
His voice expostulated.
The Bishop of Princhester reflected. The vision of God was far off among his memories now, and difficult to recall. But he said at last: “I believe there is a God and that he is as real a person as you or I. And he is not the theological God we set out before the world.”
“Personification,” said Likeman. “In the eighteenth century they used to draw beautiful female figures as Science and Mathematics. Young men have loved Science—and Freedom—as Pygmalion loved Galatea. Have it so if you will. Have a visible person for your Deity. But let me keep up my—spirituality.”
“Your spirituality seems as thin as a mist. Do you really believe—anything?”
“Everything!” said Likeman emphatically, sitting up with a transitory vigour. “Everything we two have ever professed together. I believe that the creeds of my church do express all that can possibly be expressed in the relationship of—That”—he made a comprehensive gesture with a twist of his hand upon its wrist—“to the human soul. I believe that they express it as well as the human mind can express it. Where they seem to be contradictory or absurd, it is merely that the mystery is paradoxical. I believe that the story of the Fall and of the Redemption is a complete symbol, that to add to it or to subtract from it or to alter it is to diminish its truth; if it seems incredible at this point or that, then simply I admit my own mental defect. And I believe in our Church, Scrope, as the embodied truth of religion, the divine instrument in human affairs. I believe in the security of its tradition, in the complete and entire soundness of its teaching, in its essential authority and divinity.”