His forcible, incisive manner of speaking, together with his perfect equanimity and concise clearness of argument, had an evident effect on those who listened. Here was no rampant fanatic for particular forms of doctrine or pietism,--here was a man who stated his opinions calmly, frankly, and with an absolute setting- forth of facts which could scarcely be denied,--a man, who firmly grounded himself, made no attempt to force any one's belief, but who simply took a large view of the whole, and saw, as it were in a glance, what the world might become without faith in a Divine Cause and Principle of Creation. And once GRANT this Divine Cause and Principle to be actually existent, then all other divine and spiritual things become possible, no matter how IMPOSSIBLE they seem to dull mortal comprehension.
A brief pause followed his words,--a pause of vague embarrassment. The Duchess was the first to break it.
"You have very noble ideas, Mr. Alwyn,"--she said with a faint, wavering smile--"But I am afraid your conception of things, both human and divine, is too exalted, and poetically imaginative, to be applied to our every-day life. We cannot close our ears to the thunders of science,--we cannot fail to perceive that we mortals are of as small account in the plan of the Universe as grains of sand on the seashore. It is very sad that so it should be, and yet so it is! And concerning Christianity, the poor system has been so belabored of late with hard blows, that it is almost a wonder it still breathes. There is no end to the books that have been written disproving and denouncing it,--moreover, we have had the subject recently treated in a novel which excites our sympathies in behalf of a clergyman, who, overwhelmed by scholarship, finds he can no longer believe in the religion he is required to teach, and who renounces his living in consequence. The story is in parts pathetic,--it has had a large circulation,--and numbers of people who never doubted their Creed before, certainly doubt it now."
Alwyn shrugged his shoulders. "Faith uprooted by a novel!" he said--"Alas, poor faith! It could never have been well established at any time, to be so easy of destruction! No book in the world, whether of fact or fiction, could persuade me either TO or FROM the consciousness of what my own individual Spirit instinctively KNOWS. Faith cannot be taught or forced,--neither, if TRUE, can it be really destroyed,--it is a God-born, God-fostered INTUITION, immortal as God Himself. The ephemeral theories set forth in books should not be able to influence it by so much as a hair's breadth."