I will not attempt to explain it, for I have not the power; only I
know that we who return suffer hard things; for there grows a gulf
between us and many companions. We are perpetually thrust into
minorities, and the world almost begins to talk a strange language; we
are troubled by the human machinery of a perfect and superhuman
revelation; we are over-anxious for its safety, alarmed, and in danger
of violent decisions.

And this is hard: that the Faith begins to make one abandon the old
way of judging. Averages and movements and the rest grow uncertain. We
see things from within and consider one mind or a little group as a
salt or leaven. The very nature of social force seems changed to us.
And this is hard when a man has loved common views and is happy only
with his fellows.

And this again is very hard, that we must once more take up that awful
struggle to reconcile two truths and to keep civic freedom sacred in
spite of the organization of religion, and not to deny what is
certainly true. It is hard to accept mysteries, and to be humble. We
are tost as the great schoolmen were tost, and we dare not neglect the
duty of that wrestling.

But the hardest thing of all is that it leads us away, as by a
command, from all that banquet of the intellect than which there is no
keener joy known to man.

I went slowly up the village place in the dusk, thinking of this
deplorable weakness in men that the Faith is too great for them, and
accepting it as an inevitable burden. I continued to muse with my eyes
upon the ground ...