CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS. 39 



tells us, his soul fainted within him, his heart misgave 

 him, and, standing alone on the seashore at dusk, he 

 " troubled deaf heaven with his bootless cries," his thin 

 voice pleading for grace after the flesh. 



The waves came in one after another, the sea-gulls 

 cried together after their kind, the wind rustled among 

 the dried canes upon the sandbanks, and there came a 

 voice from heaven saying, " Let My grace be sufficient 

 for thee." Whereon, failing of the thing itself, he stole 

 the word and strove to crush its meaning to the mea- 

 sure of his own limitations. But the true grace, with 

 her groves and high places, and troups of young men 

 and maidens crowned with flowers, and singing of love 

 and youth and wine — the true grace he drove out into 

 the wilderness — high up, it may be, into Piora, and into 

 such-like places. Happy they who harboured her in 

 her ill report. 



It is common to hear men wonder what new faith 

 will be adopted by mankind if disbelief in the Christian 

 religion should become general. They seem to expect 

 that some new theological or quasi-theological system 

 will arise, which, mutatis mutandis, shall be Christianity 

 over again. It is a frequent reproach against those who 

 maintain that the supernatural element of Christianity 

 is without foundation, that they bring forward no such 

 system of their own. They pull down but cannot 

 build. We sometimes hear even those who have come 

 to the same conclusions as the destroyers say, that 

 having nothing new to set up, they will not attack the 

 old. But how can people set up a new superstition, 

 knowing it to be a superstition ? Without faith in 



