a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which may be granted him.” That magnificent preface to The Crown of Wild Olive ought long ago to have silenced these dismal sophists. The fact is, that this age of ours, in proportion as it grows indifferent to the old legends and the appeals of the clergy, rises toward heights which man never climbed before. The clergy are most amusingly puzzled. Popes tell us that we are children of perdition, reeling into an earthly abyss, to say nothing of a deeper beyond: archbishops say that we are just beginning to realise the true import of Christ’s teaching. The candid man or woman will look searchingly for himself or herself into the heart of our age, and, if he or she have an accurate knowledge of earlier ages, will recognise that it throbs with a human idealism, tenderness, and sympathy which have been unknown in Europe since the old pagans departed.
Let me end on that note. The religious person will close this work, if he perseveres to the end, with a series of horrified exclamations. Socialism! Immoralism! Republicanism! Materialism! Malthusianism! I shudder under the shower of horrid epithets, yet would ask this outraged reader to forget “’isms” for a moment and consider a simple statement of the human faith I here present.
The ideals which I hold in supreme regard are truth in our beliefs and statements, justice and generosity in our actions, the co-operation of all men to make the earth happier. I am in tempera-
