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.
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