Each step in my career of
criticism takes me further away from the starting-point. Have I, then,
lost all hope of coming back to Catholicism? That would be too bitter
a thought. No, sir, I have no hopes of reverting to it by rational
progress; but I have often been on the point of repudiating for once
and all the guide whom at times I mistrust. What would then be the
motive of my life? I cannot tell; but activity will ever find scope.
You may be sure that I must have been sorely forced to have dwelt for
one instant upon a thought which seems more cruel to me than death.
And yet, if my conscience represented it to me as lawful, I should
eagerly avail myself of it, if only out of common decency.
"I hope at all events that those who know me will admit that
interested motives have not estranged me from Christianity. Have not
all my material interests tempted me to find it true? The temporal
considerations against which I have had to struggle would have
sufficed to persuade many others; my heart has need of Christianity;
the Gospel will ever be my moral law; the church has given me my
education, and I love her. Could I but continue to style myself her
son! I pass from her in spite of myself; I abhor the dishonest attacks
levelled at her; I frankly confess that I have no complete substitute
for her teaching; but I cannot disguise from myself the weak points
which I believe that I have found in it and with regard to which it
is impossible to effect a compromise, because we have to do with a
doctrine in which all the component parts hold together and cannot be
detached.
Pages:
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247