"But the belief in the Gospels is a traditional belief," said Charles; "that makes all the difference. I cannot see how a nation like England, which has lost the faith, ever can recover it. Hence, in the matter of conversion, Providence has generally visited simple and barbarous nations."
"The converts of the Roman Empire were, I suppose, a considerable exception," said the priest.
"Still, it seems to me a great difficulty," answered Charles; "I do not see, when the dogmatic structure is once broken down, how it is ever to be built up again. I fancy there is a passage somewhere in Carlyle's 'French Revolution' on the subject, in which the author laments over the madness of men's destroying what they could not replace, what it would take centuries and a strange combination of fortunate circumstances to reproduce, an external received creed. I am not denying, God forbid! the objectivity of revelation, or saying that faith is a sort of happy and expedient delusion; but, really, the evidence for revealed doctrine is so built up on probabilities that I do not see what is to introduce it into a civilized community, where reason has been cultivated to the utmost, and argument is the test of truth. Many a man will say, 'Oh, that I had been educated a Catholic!' but he has not so been; and he finds himself unable, though wishing, to believe, for he has not evidence enough to subdue his reason. What is to make him believe?"
His fellow-traveller had for some time shown signs of uneasiness; when Charles stopped, he said, shortly, but quietly, "What is to make him believe! the will, his will."
Charles hesitated; he proceeded; "If there is evidence enough to believe Scripture, and we see that there is, I repeat, there is more than enough to believe the Church. The evidence is not in fault; all it requires is to be brought home or applied to the mind; if belief does not then follow, the fault lies with the will."
"Well," said Charles, "I think there is a general feeling among educated Anglicans, that the claims of the Roman Church do not rest on a sufficiently intellectual basis; that the evidences, or notes, were well enough for a rude age, not for this. This is what makes me despair of the growth of Catholicism."
His companion looked round curiously at him, and then said, quietly, "Depend upon it, there is quite evidence enough for a moral conviction that the Catholic or Roman Church, and none other, is the voice of God."
"Do you mean," said Charles, with a beating heart, "that before conversion one can attain to a present abiding actual conviction of this truth?"
"I do not know," answered the other; "but, at least, he may have habitual moral certainty; I mean, a conviction, and one only, steady, without rival conviction, or even reasonable doubt, present to him when he is most composed and in his hours of solitude, and flashing on him from time to time, as through clouds, when he is in the world;—a conviction to this effect, 'The Roman Catholic Church is the one only voice of God, the one only way of salvation.'"
"Then you mean to say," said Charles, while his heart beat faster, "that such a person is under no duty to wait for clearer light."