Perhaps, after all, these
last are right. They have numbers and prosperity on their side. They
have all which the rationalist appeals to as his tests of right and
wrong. Right, according to him, is what seems right to the majority of
sensible, well-to-do people; we know of no safer criterion than
this, but what does the decision thus arrived at involve? Simply this,
that a conspiracy of silence about things whose truth would be
immediately apparent to disinterested enquirers is not only
tolerable but righteous on the part of those who profess to be and
take money for being par excellence guardians and teachers of truth.
Ernest saw no logical escape from this conclusion. He saw that
belief on the part of the early Christians in the miraculous nature of
Christ's Resurrection was explicable. without any supposition of
miracle. The explanation lay under the eyes of anyone who chose to
take a moderate degree of trouble; it had been put before the world
again and again, and there had been no serious attempt to refute it.
How was it that Dean Alford, for example, who had made the New
Testament his specialty, could not or would not see what was so
obvious to Ernest himself? Could it be for any other reason than
that he did not want to see it, and if so was he not a traitor to
the cause of truth? Yes, but was he not also a respectable and
successful man, and were not the vast majority of respectable and
successful men, such for example, as all the bishops and
archbishops, doing exactly as Dean Alford did, and did not this make
their action right, no matter though it had been cannibalism or
infanticide, or even habitual untruthfulness of mind?
Monstrous, odious falsehood! Ernest's feeble pulse quickened and his
pale face flushed as this hateful view of life presented itself to him
in all its logical consistency.
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