simple metaphor, Christianity stood in the world like a light
upon a hill, and that partial and imperfect reflections of this
light were thrown back, with more or less clearness, from the
various human systems of belief that surrounded it. And at last
it became evident, even to the most unintelligent, that the only
scientific explanation of this phenomenon lay in the theory that
Christianity was indeed unique, and, at the very least, was the
most perfect human system of faith--perfectly human, I mean, in
that it embodied and answered adequately all the religious
aspirations of the human race--the most perfect system of faith
the world had ever seen.

"A third cause was to be found in the new philosophy of evidence
that began to prevail soon after the dawn of the century.

"Up to that period, so-called Physical Science had so far
tyrannized over men's minds as to persuade them to accept her
claim that evidence that could not be reduced to her terms was
not, properly speaking, evidence at all. Men demanded that purely
spiritual matters should be, as they said, 'proved,' by which
they meant should be reduced to physical terms. Little by little,
however, the preposterous nature of this claim was understood.
People began to perceive that each order of life had evidence
proper to itself--that there were such things, for instance, as
moral proofs, artistic proofs, and philosophical proofs; and that
these proofs were not interchangeable. To demand physical proof
for every article of belief was as fantastic as to demand, let us
say, a chemical proof of the beauty of a picture, or evidence in
terms of light or sound for the moral character of a friend, or
mathematical proof for the love of a mother for her child. This