without the primal law of their many dim-dawning wonders—­that is, the Being, if such there might be, who thought their laws first and then embodied them in a world of aeonian growth.  These indeed seek law likewise, but a perfect law—­a law they can believe perfect beyond the comprehension of powers of whose imperfection they are too painfully conscious.  They feel in their highest moments a helplessness that drives them to search after some Power with a heart deeper than his power, who cares for the troubled creatures he has made.  But still under the influence of that faithless hunger for intellectual certainty, they look about and divide into two parties:  both would gladly receive the reported revelation in Jesus, the one if they could have evidence enough from without, the other if they could only get rid of the difficulties it raises within.  I am aware that I distinguish in the mass, and that both sides would be found more or less influenced by the same difficulties—­but more and less, and therefore thus classified by the driving predominance.  Those of the one party, then, finding no proof to be had but that in testimony, and anxious to have all they can—­delighting too in a certain holy wilfulness of intellectual self-immolation, accept the testimony in the mass, and become Roman Catholics.  Nor is it difficult to see how they then find rest.  It is not the dogma, but the contact with Christ the truth, with Christ the man, which the dogma, in pacifying the troubles of the intellect—­if only by a soporific, has aided them in reaching, that gives them peace:  it is the truth itself that makes them free.

The worshippers of science will themselves allow, that when they cannot gain observations enough to satisfy them upon any point in which a law of nature is involved, they must, if possible, institute experiments.  I say therefore to those whose observation has not satisfied them concerning the phenomenon Christianity,—­“Where is your experiment?  Why do you not thus try the utterance claiming to be the law of life?  Call it a hypothesis, and experiment upon it.  Carry into practice, well justified of your conscience, the words which the Man spoke, for therein he says himself lies the possibility of your acceptance of his mission; and if, after reasonable time thus spent, you are not yet convinced enough to give testimony—­I will not annoy you by saying to facts, but—­to conviction, I think neither will you be ready to abandon the continuous experiment.”  These Roman Catholics have thus met with Jesus, come into personal contact with him:  by the doing of what he tells us, and by nothing else, are they blessed.  What if their theories show to me like a burning of the temple and a looking for the god in the ashes?  They know in whom they have believed.  And if some of us think we have a more excellent way, we shall be blessed indeed if the result be no less excellent than in such men as Faber, Newman, and Aubrey de Vere.