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It would have seemed natural for the spirit of liberty, which was then tending to modify morality, to take up its stand also in the other domains of thought and action. But it did nothing of the kind: human nature cares little for contradiction. While morality was becoming more free, the mind was becoming less so; it was demanding that religion should restore its yoke.
It happens sometimes that a fact obtained as an historical conclusion is in contradiction with a body of known historical facts, or with the sum of our knowledge of humanity founded on direct observation, or with a scientific law established by the regular method of an established science.
A theory which would leave any one of them out of account, or set up any arbitrary relation between them, would immediately become involved in such a contradiction with the reality, that it might be regarded as destroyed at once by that alone. The problem is, therefore, that theory shall keep itself poised in a manner between these three tendencies, as between three points of attraction.
Doubtless, if apostolical succession be God's will, it is our duty to receive it and to teach it; but a number of clergymen, claiming themselves to have this succession, and insisting that, without it, neither Christ nor Christ's Sacraments will save us, do, beyond all contradiction, preach themselves, and magnify their own importance.
Let it be provided with the ordinary complement of sensations the colours X Y Z. Now, we admit that these sensations cannot be extruded beyond the periphery of vision; and yet we maintain that, unless they be made to fall on the outside of that periphery, they cannot become real objects. How is this difficulty this contradiction to be overcome?
'If God be with us, why has all this come upon us? III. And now, lastly, let us think for a moment of the solution of the contradiction. The indignant questions of my text may be taken, with a little possibly permissible violence, as expressing and dismissing some untrue explanations. One explanation that sometimes is urged is, the Spirit of the Lord is straitened.
There is no contradiction, however, but glorious harmony, in the idea that Christ will claim the whole of mankind for His own, because he has bought them every one, and has omnipotent power to claim them. I feel that I ought almost to apologise for using the word "claim" at all in such a conception.
But scarcely a hundred yards further a strange contradiction of such tenderness occurred. A child running along the path towards them fell on its face, and set up a dismal cry of fright and pain. A look of horror came into Frank's eyes, and, putting his fingers in his ears, he fled at full speed down the street, and did not pause till he was out of hearing.
All comfort must be based on discomfort. Man chooses when he wishes to be most joyful the very moment when the whole material universe is most sad. It is this contradiction and mystical defiance which gives a quality of manliness and reality to the old winter feasts which is not characteristic of the sunny felicities of the Earthly Paradise.
However, should our arguments fail to prove satisfactory or should they give rise to contradiction, we would repeat here what Newman wrote in his Preface to "Difficulties of Anglicans," "It has not been our practice to engage in controversy with those who felt it their duty to criticise what at any time we have written; but that will not preclude us under present circumstances, from elucidating what is deficient in them by further observations, should questions be asked, which, either from the quarter whence they proceed, or from their intrinsic weight, have, according to our judgment, a claim upon our attention."
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