1878 THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH 83 



in greater degree than did George Eomanes. Step 

 by step he abandoned the position he had maintained 

 in his Burney Prize, with no great pauses, rather, as 

 it seems, with starthng rapidity, and with sad and with 

 reluctant backward glances he took up a position of 

 agnosticism, for a time almost of materiahsm. He 

 wrote a book, published in 1876, which was entitled 

 ' A Candid Examination of Theism.' It is almost 

 needless to discuss the work, as it has been dealt 

 \\'ith by its -author in his posthumous ' Thoughts on 

 ReHgion.' It is an able piece of work, and is 

 marked throughout by a lofty spirit, a profound sad- 

 ness, and a belief (which years after he criticised 

 sharply) in the exclusive hght of the scientific method 

 in the Court of Eeason. 



His education had been on strictly scientific 

 lines, and the limitations of thought produced by 

 such education are clearly seen in that essay ; 

 ' Hmitations ' which the philosophical and the 

 metaphysical tendencies of his mind soon led him 

 to overstep. 



The reaction against the conclusions of the essay 

 set in far sooner than has been at all suspected. 

 Perhaps the first published mark of reaction is the 

 Eede Lecture ^ of 1885. 



Yet anyone who reads carefully the conclusion of 

 the ' Candid Examination' ^ will see the note of ' long- 

 ing and thirsting for God.' 



' Now republished in a book called ' Mind and Motion.' 

 ^ And forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those who 

 affirm that the twUight doctrine of the ' new faith ' is a desirable 

 substitute for the waning splendour of ' the old,' I am not ashamed to 

 confess that with this virtual negation of God the universe to me has lost 

 its soul of loveliness ; and although from henceforth the precept to ' work 

 while it is day' wiU doubtless but gain an intensified force from the 

 terribly intensified meaning of the words that ' the night cometh when no 

 man can work,' yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of 

 the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which 



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