Whether it is right to say that one believes in God and Christianity
without intending what one knows the hearer intends one to intend depends
on how much or how little the hearer can understand. Life is not an
exact science, it is an art. Just as the contention, excellent so far as
it goes, that each is to do what is right in his own eyes leads, when
ridden to death, to anarchy and chaos, so the contention that every one
should be either self-effacing or truthful to the bitter end reduces life
to an absurdity. If we seek real rather than technical truth, it is more
true to be considerately untruthful within limits than to be
inconsiderately truthful without them. What the limits are we generally
know but cannot say.
There is an unbridgeable chasm between thought and words that we must
jump as best we can, and it is just here that the two hitch on to one
another. The higher rules of life transcend the sphere of language; they
cannot be gotten by speech, neither shall logic be weighed for the price
thereof. They have their being in the fear of the Lord and in the
departing from evil without even knowing in words what the Lord is, nor
the fear of the Lord, nor yet evil.
Common straightforwardness and kindliness are the highest points that man
or woman can reach, but they should no more be made matters of
conversation than should the lowest vices. Extremes meet here as
elsewhere and the extremes of vice and virtue are alike common and
unmentionable.
There is nothing for it but a very humble hope that from the Great
Unknown Source our daily insight and daily strength may be given us with
our daily bread. And what is this but Christianity, whether we believe
that Jesus Christ rose from the dead or not? So that Christianity is
like a man’s soul—he who finds may lose it and he who loses may find it.
If, then, a man may be a Christian while believing himself hostile to all
that some consider most essential in Christianity, may he not also be a
free-thinker (in the common use of the word) while believing himself
hostile to free-thought?
XXIII
Death