t size in shoes he took, or whether he swore when he stood on
a nail in the carpenter's shop, or could not button his robe when he was
in a hurry, or whether he laughed over the repartees by which he baffled
the priests when they tried to trap him into sedition and blasphemy,
or even if you tell any part of his story in the vivid terms of modern
colloquial slang, you will produce an extraordinary dismay and horror
among the iconolaters. You will have made the picture come out of its
frame, the statue descend from its pedestal, the story become real, with
all the incalculable consequences that may flow from this terrifying
miracle. It is at such moments that you realize that the iconolaters
have never for a moment conceived Christ as a real person who meant
what he said, as a fact, as a force like electricity, only needing the
invention of suitable political machinery to be applied to the affairs
of mankind with revolutionary effect.

Thus it is not disbelief that is dangerous in our society: it is belief.
The moment it strikes you (as it may any day) that Christ is not the
lifeless harmless image he has hitherto been to you, but a rallying
centre for revolutionary influences which all established States and
Churches fight, you must look to yourselves; for you have brought the
image to life; and the mob may not be able to bear that horror.

THE ALTERNATIVE TO BARRABAS.

But mobs must be faced if civilization is to be saved. It did not need
the present war to show that neither the iconographic Christ nor the
Christ of St. Paul has succeeded in effecting the salvation of human
society. Whilst I write, the Turks are said to be massacring the
Armenian Christians on an unprecedented scale; but Europe is not in a
position to remonstrate; for her Christians are slaying one another by
every device which civilization has put within their reach as busily as
they are slaying the Turks. Barabbas is triumphant everywhere; and the
final use he makes of his triumph is to lead us all to suicide with
heroic gestures and resounding lies. Now those who, like myself, see the
Barabbasque social organization as a failure, and are convinced that the
Life Force (or whatever you choose to call it) cannot be finally beaten
by any failure, and will even supersede humanity by evolving a higher
species if we cannot master the problems raised by the multiplication
of our own numbers, have always known that Jesus had a real message,
and have f