power of good for very long, for the simple
reason that those who are selfish and evil have a natural suspicion of
other selfish and evil people; and no combination of men can ever be
based upon anything but mutual trust and affection. And thus good has
always a power of combination, while evil is naturally solitary and
disjunctive.

Take such an attempt as that of Nietzsche to establish a new theory of
life. His theory of the superman is simply this, that the future of
the world was in the hands of strong, combative, powerful, predatory
people. Those are the supermen, a natural aristocracy of force and
unscrupulousness and vigour. But such individuals carry with them the
seed of their own failure, because even if Nietzsche's view that the
weak and broken elements of humanity were doomed to perish, and ought
even to be helped to perish, were a true view, even if his supermen at
last survived, they must ultimately be matched one against another in
some monstrous and unflinching combat.

Nietzsche held that the Christian doctrine of renunciation was but a
translating into terms of a theory the discontent, the disappointment,
the failure of the weak and diseased element of humanity, the slavish
herd. He thought that Christianity was a glorification, a consecration
of man's weakness and not of his strength. But he misjudged it wholly.
It is based in reality upon the noble element in humanity, the power
of love and trust and unselfishness which rises superior to the ills
of life; and the force of Christianity lies in the fact that it
reveals to men the greatness of which they are capable, and the fact
that no squalor or wretchedness of circumstances can bind the thought
of man, if it is set upon what is high and pure. The man or woman who
sees the beauty of inner purity cannot ever be very deeply tainted by
corruption either of body or of soul.

Renunciation is not a wholly passive thing; it is not a mere suspicion
of all that is joyful, a dull abnegation of happiness. It is not that
self-sacrifice means a frame of mind too despondent to enjoy, so
fearful of every kind of pleasure that it has not the heart to take
part in it. It is rather a vigorous discrimination between pleasure
and joy, an austerity which is not deceived by selfish, obvious,
apparent pleasure, but sees what sort of pleasure is innocent,
natural, social, and what sort of pleasure is corroding, barren, and
unreal.

In the Christianity of the Gospel th