So long as a man walks by faith, by the acceptance of
authority, human or Divine, there is always psychologically possible
the assertion of self, the instinct that what one has not personally
experienced may just conceivably be untrue. But when one has seen--so
long as memory does not disappear--this agnostic instinct is an
impossibility. Every single act therefore has a new significance.
There is no venture about it any more; there is, indeed, very little
opportunity for heroism. Once it is certain, by the evidence of the
senses, that death is just an interlude, this life becomes merely part
of a long process....
Now as to the conduct of that life--what of religion? And here, for a
moment or two, Laurie was genuinely dismayed. For, as he looked at the
Catholic religion, he perceived that the whole thing had changed. It
no longer seemed august and dominant. As he contemplated himself as he
had been at Mass on the previous morning, he seemed to have been
rather absurd. Why all this trouble, all this energy, all these
innumerable acts and efforts of faith? It was not that his religion
seemed necessarily untrue; it was certainly possible for a man to hold
simultaneously Catholic and spiritualistic beliefs; there had not been
a hint last night against Christianity, and yet, in the face of this
evidence of the senses, Catholicism seemed a very shadowy thing.
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