any revelation superior to reason--must not reason have once decided
that it was a revelation, or was not? And what of all the other
"revelations", which all the other peoples of the world accepted?
And then again, if Jesus had been God, could he really have been
tempted? To be God and man at the same time--did that not mean both
to know and not to know? And was there any way conceivable for
anything to be God, in which everything else was not God?

These perplexities and many others the boy took to his clerical
adviser, a man who loved him dearly, and who gave him some volumes
of the "Bampton lectures" to read. Here was the defense of
Christianity, conducted by authorities, and with scholarship and
dignity; and Thyrsis found to his dismay that the only convincing
parts of their books were where they gave a _resume_ of the
arguments of their opponents. He learned in this way many
difficulties that had not yet occurred to him; and when he had got
through with the reading his mind was made up. If any man were to be
damned for not believing such things, then it was his duty as a
thinker to be damned; and so he bade farewell to the Church--something
which was sad, in a way, for his mother had been planning him for a
bishop!

Section 6. But Thyrsis was throwing away many chances these days. He
went into the higher regions to spend his Christmas holidays; and
instead of being tactful and agreeable, he buried himself in a
corner of the library all day long. For Thyrsis had made the
greatest discovery yet--he had found out Shakespeare! At school they
had taught him "English" by means of "to be or not to be", and they
had sought to trap him at examinations by means of "man's first
disobedience and the fruit"; and so for years they had held him back