_What, then, is the end of this process, or has it an end at all? For myself, I am content to believe that it has not. From century to century, it seems to me, we learn to get on with less and less of belief in supernatural things to encourage or to justify us, and I see no limit to that development. I go further, and say that I do not wish to see any limit to that development. The less we believe, clearly, the more creditable it is in us to call ourselves Christians still. Our object, therefore, at all times must be to reduce belief to its irreducible minimum; we must believe as little as we can, and be constantly on the lookout for some method by which we may be enabled to believe even less. It is not easy, this search of ours; like hill-climbers, we are bounded by our own horizon, and cannot yet see the full possibilities of disbelief that lie ahead of us. And just as, surely, we do not blame Luther because, with his limited perspective, he failed to disbelieve in the Bible; just as we do not blame Kant because he could not see how to disbelieve in the human reason; so, let us hope, our descendants will not be too hard on us because here and there we were guilty, through mere shortsightedness, of setting limits to our incredulity._
_And thus we come down to the very interesting question, Is there a vanishing-point? Will there come a time when we are able to call ourselves Christians without believing anything at all? For myself, I confess that I do not think so. It seems to me that it is an integral part of our Christian probation, this perpetual struggle to disbelieve; that, consequently, the residuum of belief must be conceived, not as a difference which will sooner or later disappear as the result of successive subtractions, but as a quotient with an infinite divisibility. To the last end of time, it seems to me, we shall be able to continue offering up the old prayer, that we may be helped in our unbelief._
_There, dear Lady Porstock, you have my view of the case. I only hope that these stumbling words of mine may help you to know your own mind._
_Yours quite sincerely_, AMPHIBOLUS NORVIC
I had just finished reading this remarkable letter, and was engaged in considering whether it was exactly what I wanted or exactly what I did not want, when the teletypewriter that connected with the front door rang at my elbow, and told me that Cardinal Smith had called. It was not much past five, but I knew his old-fashioned habits, so I whistled for tea and went down to show him up. When I saw him I had a curious experience. There is a certain smile one only sees (I think) on the faces of Catholic ecclesiastics, a smile which their friends call sanctified and their enemies cunning. To me it had always seemed to say, “I can afford to wait,” and it had always irritated me rather, as if its cocksureness indicated that sooner or later he was bound to make a proselyte of me. To-day it still seemed to say, “I can afford to wait,” only I found myself attaching a different significance to it. Well, he came up, and we had a long talk. I do not propose to describe it; after all, this is not a religious autobiography. But soon afterwards, when I was at my Chiswick house, I began to go to the Oratory for instruction.