Him with a satisfied mind as well as a loving heart, and to drive the antagonist into the confusion of folly.1

There is no conflict between faith and reason: indeed the Christian faith is the only reasonable way of thinking, and men will go to Hell if, having seen and understood it, they reject it for their own selfish ends. God in all things appeals to our reason;2 there is no higher court of appeal: if a thing is irrational or self-contradictory no man can be justified in accepting it as true however great the pressure. God's one weapon in the fight against error is The Truth, the Arm of the Lord, "to whom is the Arm of the Lord revealed?" (Isa. 53,1). There is such a thing as the full assurance of understanding which is the goal of the healthy believer,3 and God's words are all plain to him that understandeth.4 The surrender of the intellect to authority, whether it be to that of some powerful church, or of some modern ideology, is the final abdication of humanity. The Holy Ghost came for the express purpose of leading the Church into all truth. He is never happier than when bringing the infant child of God to the stature of the fullness of Christ in faith and knowledge.

The Bible was written, not for great intellects, but for simple babes.5 Its truths are so obvious that to deny them is the greatest crime, worthy of death, and impatient of any defence, "he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark 16,16), "that they all might be damned who believed not the truth" (2 Thess. 2,11-12). It is the things that worldly men believe, such as Mohammedanism or Evolution or Christian Science, that have to be believed against the evidence and the plain dictates of common sense, in which clever but wicked men have to think up every conceivable kind of argument that can serve to bolster up a bad case.

On the contrary the wisdom of God is so plain that John was able to write it in words of one syllable; while the wisdom of men invariably requires a particular sort of jargon that only the initiated can understand, correct thinking dresses itself in homespun; it is foolishness and muddle-headedness that requires verbal frills and furbelows if it is to be acceptable. God is angry with men not just for evil living, but also for devious thinking wherewith to defend it, so that in the end their minds are permanently damaged and unable to think straight at all. "And even as they did not like to retain