for the sake of the associations.  Of course he triumphs over me at every point.  He is entrenched in what he calls a logical system, and he fires off texts as if from a machine-gun.  Of course my point is that all strict denominations have got a severely logical system, but that they can’t all be sound, because they all deduce different conclusions from the same evidence.  All denominational positions are drawn up by able men, and I imagine that an old theology like the Catholic theology is one of the most ingenious constructions in the world from the logical point of view.  But the mischief of it all is that the data are incomplete, and many of them are not mathematically demonstrable at all.  They are all coloured by human ideas and personalities and temperaments, and half of them are intuitions and experiences, which vary at different times and under different circumstances.  All precise denominational systems are the outcome of the desire for a precise certainty in the minds of business-like people—­the people who say that they wish to know exactly where they are.  Now I don’t go so far as to say, or even to think, that religion will always be as mysterious a thing as it is now.  I fully expect that we shall know much more about it some day.  But we don’t at present know very much about the central things of all—­the nature of God, the relation of good and evil, life after death, human psychology.  We have not reached the point of being able definitely to identify the moral force of the world with the forces which do not appear to be moral, but are undoubtedly, active—­with realities, that is, as we come into contact with them.  There are no scientific certainties on these points—­we simply have not reached that stage.  My friend’s view is that out of a certain number of denominations, one is undoubtedly right.  My view is that all are necessarily incomplete.  But the moment I say this, he says that my religion is so vague as not to be a religion at all.

“Now my own position is this, that I think religion, by which I mean our relation to the Power behind the world, is the most important fact in the world, as well as the most absorbingly interesting.  Whatever form of religion I study, I seem to see the same thing going on.  The saints, however much they differ in dogma, seem to me to have a strong family likeness.  Mysticism is a very definite thing indeed, and I have never any doubt that all mystics have the same or a very similar experience, namely, the perception of some perfectly definite force—­as real a force as electricity, for instance—­with which they are in touch.  Something, which is quite clearly there, is affecting them in a particular way.