Nor is belief in individual immortality any criterion. Theosophists,
rejecting vicarious atonement so sternly that they insist that the
smallest of our sins brings its Karma, also insist on individual
immortality and metempsychosis in order to provide an unlimited field
for Karma to be worked out by the unredeemed sinner. The belief in the
prolongation of individual life beyond the grave is far more real
and vivid among table-rapping Spiritualists than among conventional
Christians. The notion that those who reject the Christian (or any
other) scheme of salvation by atonement must reject also belief in
personal immortality and in miracles is as baseless as the notion that
if a man is an atheist he will steal your watch.
I could multiply these instances to weariness. The main difference
that set Gladstone and Huxley by the ears is not one between belief in
supernatural persons or miraculous events and the sternest view of
such belief as a breach of intellectual integrity: it is the difference
between belief in the efficacy of the crucifixion as an infallible cure
for guilt, and a congenital incapacity for believing this, or (the same
thing) desiring to believe it.