Matthew Arnold was a Victorian who felt keenly, as did many of his contemporaries, the apparent decline of religious faith. In his masterpiece, Dover Beach, he wrote,

"The Sea of Faith,

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore,

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing, roar......"

Arnold and many others were assailed on all sides by the advancement of science, something they clearly thought was slicing ever more deeply into theology. Of course, from a modern perspective, that is just plain wrong. I have noted before that there are no real contradictions between good theology and good science. But I digress.

Christina Rosetti, as I have also noted before, was a devotional poet with doubtless a stronger faith than Mr Arnold, yet she too could be beset by doubt. Here is her poem, also masterful, about today.

Good Friday

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,

That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,

To number drop by drop Thy blood's slow loss,

And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon -

I, only I.

Yet give not o'er -

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.

It is perfectly normal to doubt. What you do with that doubt is what matters. And where you end up.