There is one more type of person I should include among the many strange buttresses of the Church--namely, the person who refuses point blank to be enlightened. The Churches have been lulled into a sense of security by many causes, but chief among them, perhaps, there stands out the fact that people not only will not take the trouble to inquire into the grounds of their faith, but consider that it would be positively wicked to do any such thing. To such I can only repeat the words of the Rev. J. W. Diggle, now Bishop of Carlisle. "There are," he says, "perhaps, few things, and certainly nothing of similar moment, about which men give themselves so little trouble, and take such little pains, as the ascertainment, by strict examination, of the foundations and the evidences of their religion. Hence so many religious persons are like children who have not learned things accurately. They are fearful of being questioned, and are out of temper in an examination." However, as an excuse for this timidity--for it is often nothing else--it must be conceded that a deep study of the evidences does, more often than not, end in agnosticism. This gives rise to the serious question: "If it is God who assists us to remain staunch to our creed, why does He so often forsake us, just when we are trying to lead more thoughtful lives and, consequently, study more deeply the faith we profess?" On the one hand, we find that modern agnosticism is not the result of carelessness, but of thoughtfulness. On the other hand, we observe that the Church numbers among some of its firmest adherents not only those who are ignorant through circumstances over which they have no control, or through thoughtlessness, but also those who remain ignorant through fear to inquire. § 3. Christianity and Science not Reconciled. Has the Church, then, been deceived in her impression that a reconciliation has taken place between Christianity and Science? Most certainly. I grant that to some extent there exists a patched-up peace. The modern apologist no longer adopts the unwise course of maintaining every strange phenomenon to be miraculous as long as it is unexplained, whereby each advance of physical science used necessarily to be hostile to theology. He even goes further, and says that the Resurrection and all the miracles may be only the manifestation of some law which is as yet beyond the analysis of our short experience. But, as I shall show later on, the new interpretations tone down hostility in one respect only to raise fresh and greater difficulties in another.