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.
