now"--and one may in turn reply, that, perhaps our age may not be
without occasion for such high service, but that we may be unwilling to
go to the lions. Our time has its own trial--by no means unexacting let
me tell you--but we quietly slip it by: it is much easier to revile the
infidel. This as a test of loyalty should be pinned: we shall shut up
thereby the hypocrite. And the earnest man, more conscious of his own
burden, will be more sympathetic, generous and just, and will come to be
more logical and to see what Newman well remarked, that one who asks
questions shows he has no belief and in asking may be but on the road to
one. If to ask a question is to express a doubt, it is no less, perhaps,
to seek a way out of it. "What better can he do than inquire, if he is
in doubt?" asks Newman. "Not to inquire is in his case to be satisfied
with disbelief." We should, acting in this light, instead of denouncing
the questioner, answer his question freely and frankly, encourage him to
ask others and put him one or two by the way. Men meeting in this manner
may still remain on opposite sides, but there will be formed between
them a bond of sympathy that mutual sincerity can never fail to
establish. This is freedom, and a fine beautiful thing, surely worth a
fine effort. What we have grown accustomed to, the bitterness, the
recriminations, the persecutions and retaliations, are all the evil
weeds of prejudice, growing around our principles and choking them. They
are so far a denial of principle, a proof of mental slavery. Our freedom
will attest to faith: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
Liberty."


VIII


This, in conclusion, is the root of the matter: to claim freedom and to