And by disbelief I do not mean some sort of brave
rejection of the doctrine, some defiant demand flung at heaven for possession of one's own soul; I mean merely the impotence of an imagination that finds the very notion of sin incomprehensible, the conscience of a man who is sure that, whatever sin might be, it surely lies lightly upon a soul as decent as his own, and can be
brushed off with a single casual stroke of a primly gloved hand; I mean an habitual insensibility to the illuminations and chastisements of beauty, a condition of being wholly at home in a world from which mystery and sin and glory have all been banished, and in which spiritual wretchedness has become material contentment.