We had no idealism.

We were poor sceptics trusting to economics--the economics of a base materialism.
But though he broods over the sorrows and sufferings of mankind, and views with an unutterable grief the dismemberment of Christendom, he refuses to style himself a pessimist.

There is much good in the world; he is continually being astonished by the goodness of individuals; he cannot bring himself to despair of mankind.

Ah, if he had only kept himself in that atmosphere! But "it is very hard to be a good Christian." As for theology, as for modernism, people are not bothered, he says, by a supposed conflict between Religion and Science.

What they want is a message.