There is only one explanation of the phenomenon—a phenomenon always present, but particularly arresting to the educated man outside the Catholic Church in the English-speaking countries—there is only one explanation which will account for the multiplicity of such entries and for the infinitely varied quality of the minds attracted by the great change; and that explanation is that the Catholic Church is reality. If a distant mountain may be mistaken for a cloud by many, but is recognised for a stable part of the world (its outline fixed and its quality permanent) by every sort of observer, and among these especially by men famous for their interest in the debate, for their acuteness of vision and for their earlier doubts, the overwhelming presumption is that the thing seen is a piece of objective reality. Fifty men on shipboard strain their eyes for land. Five, then ten, then twenty, make the land-fall and recognise it and establish it for their fellows. To the remainder, who see it not or who think it a bank of fog, there is replied the detail of the outline, the character of the points recognised, and that by the most varied and therefore convergent and convincing witnesses—by some who do not desire that land should be there at all, by some who dread its approach, as well as those who are glad to find it, by some who have long most ridiculed the idea that it was land at all—and it is in this convergence of witnesses that we have one out of the innumerable proofs upon which the rational basis of our religion reposes.—_The Editor._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY: A NEW RELIGION 15 II. THE OBVIOUS BLUNDERS 27 III. THE REAL OBSTACLES 49 IV. THE WORLD INSIDE OUT 75 V. THE EXCEPTION PROVES THE RULE 93 VI. A NOTE ON PRESENT PROSPECTS 111 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTRODUCTORY A NEW RELIGION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CONVERSION CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY: A NEW RELIGION The Catholic faith used to be called the Old Religion; but at the present moment it has a recognized place among the New Religions. This has nothing to do with its truth or falsehood; but it is a fact that has a great deal to do with the understanding of the modern world.