But with all his boyishness, and
charm, and humility, and engaging cleverness, there is a light in his
eyes too feverish for peace of mind. I cannot prevent myself from
thinking that his secession, which was something of a comedy to his
friends, may prove something of a tragedy to him.
He seems to me one of the most pathetic examples I ever encountered of
the ruin wrought by Fear. I think that the one motive of his life has
been a constant terror of finding himself in the wrong. The door, which
for Dr. Inge has no key, because it has no lock, is to Ronald Knox a
door of terror which opens only to a single key--and a door which as
surely shuts out from eternal life the soul that is wrong as the soul
that is wicked. He must have certainty. He dare not contemplate the
prospect of awaking one day to find his religious life "a ghastly
mistake."
At the cross roads there was for him no Good Shepherd, only the dark
shadow of an offended God. He ran for safety, for certainty. Has he
found them?
It may be that the last of his doubts will leave him, that the iron
discipline of the Roman Church and the auto-suggestion of his own
earnest passion for inward peace, may deliver him from all fear, all
uneasiness, and that one day, forsaking the challenging sermon and the
too violent assertion of the Catholic faith, he may find himself sitting
down in great peace of mind and with a golden mellowness of spirit to
write an _Apologia pro Vita Sua_ more genial and less shallow than _A
Spiritual AEneid_.
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