He has, however, known some and read of more who by their faith in the
man conquered all anxiety, doubt, and fear, lived pure, and died in
gladsome hope. On the other hand, it seems to him that the faith which
was once easy has now become almost an impossibility. And what is it he
is called upon to believe? One says one thing, another another. Much
that is asserted is simply unworthy of belief, and the foundation of the
whole has in his eyes something of the look of a cunningly devised
fable. Even should it be true, it cannot help him, he thinks, for it
does not even touch the things that make his woe: the God the tale
presents is not the being whose very existence can alone be his cure.
But he meets one who says to him, "Have you then come to your time of
life, and not yet ceased to accept hearsay as ground of action--for
there is action in abstaining as well as in doing? Suppose the man in
question to have taken all possible pains to be understood, does it
follow of necessity that he is now or ever was fairly represented by the
bulk of his followers? With such a moral distance between him and them,
is it possible?"
"But the whole thing has from first to last a strange aspect!" our
thinker replies.
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