crucified he was standing in the judgment hall, and that at the very hour
at which the miraculous darkness covered the earth; when I saw that I was
writing a discord instead of a harmony, I threw down my pen and shut up
my Bible. The shock of doubt was, however only momentary. I quickly
recognised it as a temptation of the devil, and I shrank back
horror-stricken and penitent for the momentary lapse of faith. I saw that
these apparent contradictions were really a test of faith, and that there
would be no credit in believing a thing in which there were no
difficulties. _Credo quia impossibile_; I repeated Tertullian's words at
first doggedly, at last triumphantly. I fasted as penance for my
involuntary sin of unbelief. I remembered that the Bible must not be
carelessly read, and that St. Peter had warned us that there were in it
"some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and
unstable wrest unto their own destruction". I shuddered at the
"destruction" to the edge of which my unlucky "harmony" had drawn me, and
resolved that I would never again venture on a task for which I was so
evidently unfitted. Thus the first doubt was caused, and though swiftly
trampled down, it had none the less raised its head. It was stifled, not
answered, for all my religious training had led me to regard a doubt as a
sin to be repented of, not examined. And it left in my mind the dangerous
feeling that there were some things into which it was safer not to
enquire too closely; things which must be accepted on faith, and not too
narrowly scrutinised. The awful threat: "He that believeth not shall be
damned," sounded in my ears, and, like the angel with the flaming sword,
barred the path of all too curious enquiry.



V.