to the
heart of Dickens than his great Gargantuan conception of Gog and Magog
telling London legends to each other all through the night. Those two
giants might have stood on either side of some new great city of his
invention, swarming with fanciful figures and noisy with new events.
But as it is, the two giants stand alone in a wilderness, guarding
either side of a gate that leads nowhere.

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Those abuses which are supposed to belong specially to religion belong
to all human institutions. They are not the sins of supernaturalism, but
the sins of nature. In this respect it is interesting to observe that
all the evils which our Rationalist or Protestant tradition associates
with the idolatrous veneration of sacred figures arises in the merely
human atmosphere of literature and history. Every extravagance of
hagiology can be found in hero-worship. Every folly alleged in the
worship of saints can be found in the worship of poets. There are those
who are honourably and intensely opposed to the atmosphere of religious
symbolism or religious archaeology. There are people who have a vague
idea that the worship of saints is worse than the imitation of sinners.
There are some, like a lady I once knew, who think that hagiology is the
scientific study of hags. But these slightly prejudiced persons
generally have idolatries and superstitions of their own, particularly
idolatries and superstitions in connection with celebrated people. Mr.
Stead preserves a pistol belonging to Oliver Cromwell in the office of
the _Review of Reviews_; and I am sure he worships it in his rare
moments of solitude and leisure. A man, who could not be induced to
believe in God by all the arguments of all the philosophers, professed
himself ready to believe if he could see it stated on a postcard in the
handwriting of Mr. Gladstone. Persons not otherwise noted for their
religious exercise have been known to procure and preserve portions of
the hair of Paderewski. Nay, by this time blasphemy itself is a sacred
tradition, and almost as much respect would be paid to the alleged
relics of an atheist as to the alleged relics of a god. If any one has a
fork that belonged to Voltaire, he could probably exchange it in the
open market for a knife that belonged to St. Theresa.

Of all the instances of this there is none stranger than the case of
Dickens. It should be pondered very carefully by those who reproach
Christianity with having