people at times placing themselves. Professor Clifford, for instance,
who of all our present positivists is most uproarious in his optimism,
has yet admitted that the religion he invites us to trample on is, under
certain forms, an ennobling and sustaining thing; and for such theism as
that of Charles Kingsley's he has expressed his deepest reverence.
Again, there is Professor Huxley. He denies with the most dogmatic and
unbending severity any right to man to any supernatural faith; and he
'_will not for a moment admit_' that our higher life will suffer in
consequence.[29] And yet '_the lover of moral beauty_,' he says
wistfully, '_struggling through a world of sorrow and sin, is surely as
much the stronger for believing that sooner or later a vision of perfect
peace and goodness will burst upon him, as the toiler up a mountain for
the belief that beyond crag and snow lie home and rest_.' And he adds,
as we have seen already, that could a faith like what he here indicates
be placed upon a firm basis, mankind would cling to it as '_tenaciously
as ever a drowning sailor did to a hen-coop_.' But all this wide-spread
and increasing feeling is felt at present to be of no avail. The wish to
believe is there; but the belief is as far off as ever. There is a power
in the air around us by which man's faith seems paralysed. The
intellect, we were thinking but now, had acquired a new vigour and a
clearer vision; but the result of this growth is, with many, to have
made it an incubus, and it lies upon all their deepest hopes and wishes

_Like a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life._

Such is the condition of mind that is now spreading rapidly, and which,
sooner or later, we must look steadily in the face. Nor is it confined
to those who are its direct victims. Those who still cling, and cling
firmly, to belief are in an indirect way touched by it. Religion cannot