Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/233

Rh Biblical question was of secondary importance. Accordingly most of my time from my first introduction to philosophy was spent, directly or indirectly, in the investigation of the problems of the spirituality and immortality of the soul, the existence and nature of God, and the divinity of Christ. I had read all the literature which was of any possible usefulness in forming my judgment, and I had been guided (as far as he could) by a man who is thought most competent for that purpose. I drew up on paper the points round which my doubts centred, and added from memory all the arguments I had met in my long researches. I was not influenced by hostile writers, for I had as yet read very little of them, and had been quite unmoved by them; and I had never discussed the questions with a man of opposite opinions. The sole question was, Is the evidence which I have collected satisfactory or not? During the Christmas vacation I studied it without interruption day and night, and finally I was compelled, with great pain and anxiety, to reject it.

The literature which I had studied during the preceding years was principally Latin and French. I had looked for evidence, naturally, in the vast arsenal of Catholic apologetics, and on these fundamental Christian and theistic propositions no better can be found. No philosophy has ever replaced, or ever will replace, the scholastic philosophy as a natural basis for theology. The philosophy of the Scotch