--for instance--when Galileo discovered that the earth moved instead of the
sun (and the pope made him take it back), that second authority began to
crumble too. In the nineteenth century science had grown so strong that
the situation looked hopeless. Religion had apparently irrevocably lost
that warrant also, and thinking men not spiritually inclined, since they
had to make a choice between science and religion, took science as being
the more honest, the more certain.

"And now what has happened? The new philosophies have restored your
second Authority, and your first, as you properly say, is replaced by the
conception of Personality. Personality is nothing but the rehabilitation
of the prophet, the seer. Get him, as Hatch says, back into your Church.
The priests with their sacrifices and automatic rites, the logicians,
have crowded him out. Why do we read the Old Testament at all? Not for
the laws of the Levites, not for the battles and hangings, but for the
inspiration of the prophets. The authority of the prophet comes through
personality, the source of which is in what Myers calls the infinite
spiritual world--in God. It was Christ's own authority.

"And as for your other authority, your ordinary man, when he reads modern
philosophy, says to himself, this does not conflict with science? But he
gets no hint, when he goes to most churches, that there is, between the
two, no real quarrel, and he turns away in despair. He may accept the
pragmatism of James, the idealism of Royce, or even what is called neo
realism. In any case, he gains the conviction that a force for good is
at worn in the world, and he has the incentive to become part of it.....
But I have given you a sermon!"

"For which I can never be sufficiently, grateful," said Hodder, with an
earnestness not to be mistaken.