uaint and simple old Breton legend, which relates
how the Saviour sent the Apostles out to sell stale fish as fresh;
and when they returned unsuccessful, He was angry with them, and
said, "How shall I make you into fishers of men, if you cannot even
persuade simple people to buy stale fish for fresh?" That is a very
trenchant little allegory of ecclesiastical methods! And perhaps it is
even so that it has come to pass that Christianity is in a sense a
failure, or rather an unfulfilled hope, because it has made terms with
the world, has become pompous and respectable and mundane and
influential and combative, and has deliberately exalted civic duty
above love.

It seems to me that it is the business of all serious Christians
deliberately to face this fact; and equally it is not their business
to try to destroy the social organisation of what is miscalled
Christianity. That is as much a part of the world now as the Roman
Empire was a part of the world when Christ came; but we must not
mistake it for Christianity. Christianity is not a doctrine, or an
organisation, or a ceremonial, or a society, but an atmosphere and a
life. The essence of it is to train emotion, to believe and to
practise the belief that all human beings have in them something
interesting, lovable, beautiful, pathetic; and to make the
recognition of that fact, the establishment of simple and kind
relations with every single person with whom one is brought into
contact, the one engrossing aim of life. Thus the essence of
Christianity is in a sense artistic, because it depends upon freely
recognising the beauty both of the natural world and the human spirit.
There are enough hints of this in the Gospel, in the tender
observation of Christ, His love of flowers, birds, children, the fact
that He noted and reproduced in His stories the beauty of the homely
business of life, the processes of husbandry in field and vineyard,
the care of the sheepfold, the movement of the street, the games of
boys and girls, the little festivals of life, the wedding and the
party; all these things appear in His talk, and if more of it were
recorded, there would undoubtedly be more of such things. It is true
that as opposition and strife gathered about Him, there falls a darker
and sadder spirit upon the page, and the anxieties and ambitions of
His followers reflect themselves in the record of denunciations and
censures. But we must not be misled by this into thinking that the
m