Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows anybody knows how it would work; anybody who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones should worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. . . . Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man has not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. Continuing his spiritual autobiography, Chesterton describes his gradual emergence from the wonted agnosticism of sixteen through the mediumship of agnostic literature. Once again that remark of Bacon's showed itself to be true, "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." A man may read Huxley and Bradlaugh, who knew their minds, and call himself an agnostic. But when it comes to reading their followers, there's another story to tell. What especially struck Chesterton was the wholesale self-contradictoriness of the literature of agnosticism. One man would say that Christianity was so harmful that extermination was the least that could be desired for it, and another would insist that it had reached a harmless and doddering old age. A writer would assert that Christianity was a religion of wrath and blood, and would point to the Inquisition, and to the religious wars which have at one time or another swept over the civilized world. But by the time the reader's blood was up, he would come across some virile atheist's proclamation of the feeble, mattoid character of the religion in question, as illustrated by its quietist saints, the Quakers, the Tolstoyans, and non-resisters in general. When he had cooled down, he would run into a denunciation of the asceticism of Christianity, the monastic system, hair-shirts, and so on. Then he would come across a sweeping condemnation of its sensual luxuriousness, its bejewelled chalices, its pompous rituals, the extravagance of its archbishops, and the like. Christianity "was abused for being too plain and for being too coloured." And then the sudden obvious truth burst upon Chesterton, What if Christianity was the happy mean?