EVERY ONE who has studied the workings of his own intelligence knows that it is not all at once that a discussion on an important and difficult subject sinks into the mind and produces its legitimate effect. The conversation on Theism narrated in our last chapter seemed at first to Cholmeley to be a sort of dream. The conclusions to which it pointed hovered about his intelligence, but when they sought to enter in and establish themselves there, they encountered a host of adversaries who challenged their right, some intellectual and some moral. The habits of thought which had been growing and strengthening for ten years and more were not to be dislodged so easily. The critical spirit demanded its right to play the part to which it had been so long accustomed, of an universal solvent. The unwillingness to submit, the dislike of the yoke which Theism imposes, made the thought of yielding a most repulsive one. All this put the positive arguments for a God at a great disadvantage, and there was a struggle in his mind in which the victory seemed very uncertain. On the one hand, habit and inclination, pride and self-sufficiency, stormed against the intruding convictions, and he was half angry with his friend for putting so clearly before him the arguments he had long managed to evade. On the other hand these arguments had, after all, an ally somewhere deep down in his nature, and this, their friend and ally, pleaded their cause and demanded for them a fair hearing, and urged him not to put them aside as he would fain have done. There was something within him that told him they were true, and forced on him an unpleasant conviction that, in all his sceptical talk and sceptical thoughts, he had partly been saying what he did n
