It is still impossible to say absolutely that
England is a Christian country or a heathen country; almost exactly as
it was impossible when Herbert Spencer began to write. Separate elements
of both sorts are alive, and even increasingly alive. But neither the
believer nor the unbeliever has the impudence to call himself the
Englishman. Certainly the great Victorian rationalism has succeeded in
doing a damage to religion. It has done what is perhaps the worst of all
damages to religion. It has driven it entirely into the power of the
religious people. Men like Newman, men like Coventry Patmore, men who
would have been mystics in any case, were driven back upon being much
more extravagantly religious than they would have been in a religious
country. Men like Huxley, men like Kingsley, men like most Victorian
men, were equally driven back on being irreligious; that is, on doubting
things which men's normal imagination does not necessarily doubt. But
certainly the most final and forcible fact is that this war ended like
the battle of Sheriffmuir, as the poet says; they both did fight, and
both did beat, and both did run away.
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