Orthodoxy

THIS book is meant

to be a companion to “Heretics,” and to put the positive side in addition to

the negative. Many critics complained of the book called “Heretics” because it

merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative

philosophy. This book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably

affirmative and therefore unavoidably autobiographical. The writer has been

driven back upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset Newman in

writing his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical only in order to be

sincere. While everything else may be different the motive in both cases is the

same. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether

the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to

believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a

riddle and its answer. It deals first with all the writer’s own solitary and

sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were

all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology. The writer regards it as amounting

to a convincing creed. But if

it is not that it is at least a repeated and surprising coincidence.