Man is to be discovered in history perpetually making gods, erecting religious themes, constructing cosmogonies. It is in his nature thus to project himself upon the universe and to take his imaginations for realities. His gods are but large reflected images of himself; his religious doctrines, from the petty myths of a small savage tribe to the majestic fabric of Catholicism, are one and all upon the same model. Each is false, for each differs from the rest; and all are false, for all are compact of the same stuff as the others: a stuff bearing plainly the marks of human emotion and human construction. Now this prophet is deified, now that chief, now that other imaginary figure, half legendary or perhaps wholly without historical existence; and what is true of any one of these is true also of the Catholic scheme. The deification of its Founder is an example of deification like any other. Its elaborate theology is but a somewhat more developed specimen of what men have done before us and will do after us--a spinning of logical systems into the void on premises that are without substantial basis. Its affirmations of the miraculous are of the same legendary sort as those to be discovered in a thousand other forms; its ritual can be proved to have cousinship in this point or in that with many another ritual of sacrifice, expiation and the rest; the very details of its liturgical life, the mere ornaments, the host of practices, the great monastic institutions, the pretty small devotions of light and ornament--all these are of one material. That material has been exhaustively examined and is now historically known. A vast mass of evidence has been accumulated and continues to accumulate. The more it is co-ordinated the more clearly this conclusion appears. That is the position we have to meet. That is the main historical argument against the divine origin and authority of the Church of God. Our fundamental answer to such a position is of course not historical at all. It is the answer of faith; as though a man should say, “Yes, this stone is a stone and there are multitudes of stones, but I believe this particular stone to be a talisman.” Or as though he should say, “Yes, this Man was a man, and there have been countless millions of men; but this one Man, and this one Man only, was also God.” The rational basis (not the positive proof) of such a reply is based upon spiritual experience--upon our judgment after noting the world, its reactions towards the Faith, and the effects of the Faith upon it, that here if anywhere is the divine; a conclusion coupled with our further judgment that somewhere there must be present upon earth the visible action of the divine acting in corporate fashion through some institution, some society, some body.