The life of Faith is still the happy one.
What is more crushingly finite than knowledge? Moral discipline is a
nation's only safety. How much of your science tends in support of the great
spiritual doctrine of sacrifice!
TREBELL _returns to his subject as forceful as ever._
TREBELL. The Church has assimilated much in her time. Do you think it wise
to leave agnostic science at the side of the plate? I think, you know, that
this craving for common knowledge is a new birth in the mind of man; and if
your church won't recognise that soon, by so much will she be losing her
grip for ever over men's minds. What's the test of godliness, but your power
to receive the new idea in whatever form it comes and give it life? It is
blasphemy to pick and choose your good. [_For a moment his thoughts seem to
be elsewhere._] That's an unhappy man or woman or nation ... I know it if it
has only come to me this minute ... and I don't care what their brains or
their riches or their beauty or any of their triumph may be ... they're
unhappy and useless if they can't tell life from death.
CANTELUPE. [_Interested in the digression_] Remember that the Church's claim
has ever been to know that difference.
TREBELL. [_Fastening to his subject again._] My point is this: A man's
demand to know the exact structure of a fly's wing, and his assertion that
it degrades any child in the street not to know such a thing, is a religious
revival .
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