“I confess, Sir Horace,” said Maddock, “that you are a puzzle to me. I really should not be surprised to see you some day walking side by side with the Judge, the best friends in the world!”
“And perhaps,” said Gildea, “the Judge would not subsequently be surprised to see me doing the same with yourself! For that indeed is the only use of such poor creatures as I: we see the good in opponents and serve as links in the spiritual bridge of Humanity.”
“I should very much like,” said Maddock, “to hear how you would abuse me to him. I think I see the urbane expression with which you would delight him by shewing how, in this ecclesiastical, metaphysical, theological polemist here, habemus confitentem asinum; and then turn upon him and say: ‘The question that now arises, my dear Judge, is, has this man nothing but faults—has he no excellencies? does there remain, after the attack on him of so eminent a biblical critic as Judge Parker is, no residuum of real and vital truth? Let us see.’”
“Doctor, Doctor,” said Gildea, “to make me laugh so, is cruel!”
“You do not consider me,” said Maddock, “in the least.”
“And now,” said Maddock, “in order to complete the matter, tell me, what is _your_ superstition? Here are Alcock and Parker with their respective superstitions of Atheism and Theism, of purely scientific and purely ethical progress. Here is Hawkesbury with his superstition about the unselfishness of the People and the practical neglect of Morality. Here is Fitzgerald with his superstitious belief in a Church whose splendid logical consistency will prove its ruin. Here am I, a member of a sect that more nearly approaches ideal Christianity than any other sect in existence, and is a logical absurdity—blessed with the superstition of theology and, worse, of polemical theology, with.... But I cannot express all my superstitions: they seem more in number than the hairs of my head!”
“Let us say broadly, then, that Alcock and the Judge are those who have superstition _without_, and Fitzgerald, you, and to a certain degree Hawkesbury, those who have superstition _with_, Religion.”
“And that _I_ am he who unites in my proper person the superstitions of all with the actualities of none.”