than mysteries. For a time I was consoled by the philosophical quibbling which is offered to meet doubts about the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Eucharist; but I came at length to regard them as directly contrary to reason, and therefore, according to Catholic principles even, to be rejected. Again, the progress of science is undoubtedly eliminating supernaturalism; its torch has illumined the deep abysses of space and the veiled features of the past, and it is every day proclaiming the self-sufficiency, the self-containedness of the universe, of which man and man’s history is but an incidental product. Finally, looking back over the whole scheme of evidences I have criticized, I cannot think that an all-merciful God would have devised such a labyrinth through which men must pass to a knowledge of himself. The problem is hopelessly beyond the majority of men; if they believe, it must be on the authority of their religious guides. And when we remember the gross philosophical ignorance of those guides, and the brilliant galaxy of modern thinkers who stand against them, such an act of faith cannot reasonably be demanded.
I have now explained briefly and simply my mental experiences of the past ten years. I might have stifled my doubts from the commencement; I did not think it honest to do so. With the sword of Damocles overhead, I have pursued my inquiry to the end, and avowed my convictions. And for that I stand before the world branded as a criminal by the Church of Rome. My dearest friends have abandoned me as though I were stricken with leprosy, if they did not indeed turn upon me with bitter and insulting language, for I was an apostate, and my word availed nothing against my calumniators. And this is an age of light and freedom and Christian charity. May the days soon come in which men will agree to differ on intellectual questions, and unite in social activity; when social ostracism will not be the inevitable consequence of honesty.
