one who is more a politician than a priest; and if he rejoins
contemptuously, "This is fit for women and children," let him be
reminded that he can also study the other side if he care. If he has the
instinct of a fighter he must know every army has in its trail the
camp-follower and the vulture, but when the battle is set and the danger
is imminent, only the true soldier stands his ground. Because some who
are of poor spirit are in high place, let him not forget the old spirit
still exists. Not only the women but the best intellects of men still
keep the old traditions. Newman and Pascal, Dante and Milton, Erigena
and Aquinas, are all dead, but in our time even they have had followers
not too far off. In the same spirit Gilbert Chesterton found wonder at a
wooden post, and Francis Thompson, in his divine wandering, troubled the
gold gateways of the stars. Let our friend before he frames his final
judgment pause here. He may well be baffled by many anomalies of the
time, his eye may rest on the meaner horde, his ear be filled with the
arrogance of some unworthy successor of Paul; and if he says: "Why
permit these things?" he may be told there are some alive in this
generation who will question all such things, and who, however hard it
go with them, have no fear for the final victory.


VI


Perhaps the conventional Christian and conventional non-Christian may
rest a moment to consider the reality. Between the bitter believer and
the exasperated unbeliever, Christianity is being turned from a practice
to a polemic, and if we are to recall the old spirit we must recall the
old earnestness and simplicity of the early Martyrs. We do not hear that
they called Nero an atheist, but we do hear that they went singing to