They can neither hate the unbelievers, for they daily live in amity with them, nor despise altogether their judgment, for the most eminent thinkers of the day belong to them.

By such conditions as these the strongest faith cannot fail to be affected.

As regards the individuals who retain it, it may not lose its firmness, but it must lose something of its fervour; and as regards its own future hold upon the human race, it is faith no longer, but is anxious doubt, or, at best, a desperate trust.

Dr.Newman has pointed out how even the Pope has recognised in the sedate and ominous rise of our modern earth-born positivism some phenomenon vaster and of a different nature from the outburst of a petulant heresy; he seems to recognise it as a belligerent rather than a rebel.[30] '_One thing_,' says Dr.Newman, '_except by an almost miraculous interposition, cannot be; and that is a return to the universal religious sentiment, the public opinion, of the mediaeval time.

The Pope himself calls those centuries "the ages of faith." Such endemic faith may certainly be decreed for some future time; but_ _as far as we have the means of judging at present, centuries must run out first._'[31] In this last sentence is indicated the vast and universal question, which the mind of humanity is gathering itself together to ask--will the faith that we are so fast losing ever again revive for us?
And my one aim in this book has been to demonstrate that the entire future tone of life, and the entire course of future civilisation, depends on the answer which this question receives.
There is, however, this further point to consider.