who would give only metaphorical meat. It is between those who want to deal with people's skins only and those who mean to deal both with their skins and with their souls, between those who conceive of man as mainly belly and back and those to whom our real life is the life invisible.
It is a very curious phenomenon, this exclusion of Christian ideas from the very area which they created. For all this charity and philanthropy and social service were produced by the ideas of Christianity. And now the fruit says to the vine and to the inward life, "I have no need of thee." Of course not all the fruit says this. Some of it only says, "Vine and inward life, there is a prejudice against you. You would do well to conceal yourself. I will pretend to be the real thing." But some of the fruit has gone further. "I am the real thing," it says. "I know more than James. Faith must not only show works: works are faith. There is no need of metaphysics or creeds. Deeds are religion. The only wealth is tangible wealth, things handled, works seen, bread out of the ground, not down from heaven. Meat that the disciples could not see is too pallid for this earth. Man is his skin and the bag which it contains, and religion must understand this."
At the same time that this suicidal tendency is operating in the field of man's highest values seeking to destroy his standards and to discredit
