Faith, if it is a genuine state of deep conviction rather than a mere habit of thought or comportment, is almost always born in a moment of apocalypse—an instant of “unveiling” in which one is seized by the sense of seeing more than one can at first account for, of knowing more than one can formulate, of being called to an end one does not wholly understand—and only thereafter is it fortified and enriched and made ever subtler by the patient and persistent application of reasoned argument and the indefatigable compilation of corroborating evidences.
