But to the Bishop such a life would have been impossible, since he has not the clue to Napoleon's faith. "The noisy years" would not have offered him his ideal, even were this life all. And he does not himself believe that this life _is_ all: although he will not assert that to him a future state of existence is matter of absolute certainty. If the career of "the world's victor" is not then possible without faith of some kind, what of that of the artist, of the poet? With a return to the earlier cynical recognition of his own limitations, the Bishop enquires of what use an attempt on his part to emulate Shakespeare when endowed by nature with neither dramatic nor poetic faculty? Nevertheless he finds that he has much in life which Shakespeare would have been glad to possess. The author of _Hamlet_ and of _Othello_ might in truth enjoy the good things of earth by the mere exercise of imagination; yet, strange anomaly, he built himself The trimmest house in Stratford town; Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of _things_. Even a Shakespeare, then, may be more or less of a materialist. Thus the successful churchman who has attained the object of his ambition, whose life is one of pleasantness and peace, may with confidence, turning to the poet, ask him-- If this life's all, who wins the game? VII. If, however, the existence of another life _is_ to be recognized; if belief is to be allowed to take the place of scepticism, then the face of the argument is at once changed, and the Bishop is as ready as is his critic to admit that enthusiasm is the grandest inspiration of human nature. But he is--or so he would have his listener believe--no more capable of the enthusiastic faith of Luther than of the strategic achievements of Napoleon or the dramatic creations of Shakespeare. Nevertheless, the negations of the sceptic's creed bear for him no attraction. In either case remains the risk that faith or absence of faith may prove error. The uncertainty on both sides being equal, it is _not_ as well to be Strauss as Luther. Better even the mere desire for belief in the story of the Gospels, than a dispassionately critical attempt to reconcile discrepencies in that which has no personal interest for the enquirer: the one means spiritual vitality, the other stagnation. VIII. With line 647, once more reverting to his earlier demonstration of the impossibility of a "pure faith," the Bishop would submit that the Divine Presence is veiled rather than revealed by Nature, until such time as man shall have become capable of being "confronted with the truth of him." But what of the mediaeval days, "that age of simple faith"? Were men the better for their simplicity of belief? By no means, replies the casuist of the nineteenth century, whose faith "means perpetual unbelief." The simple faith proved itself unequal to the task of inspiring a life of outward morality: men could and did Lie, kill, rob, fornicate Full in beliefs face