e was the Invisible King in July, 1914? Or, for that
matter, what has he been doing since July, 1870? "Either he was
musing, or he was on a journey, or peradventure he slept." Truly it
would seem that he might have advised Mr. Wells to wait for the "Cease
fire!" before proclaiming his godhead.

Of course Mr. Wells will remind me that he claims for him no material
potency; and I must own that no happier moment could have been chosen
for the annunciation of an impotent God. But the plea does not quite
tally with the facts. In the first place (as we have seen) the
Invisible King is _going_ to do things--he is going to do very
remarkable things as soon as he knows how. And in the second place it
is impossible to conceive that the tremendous psychical influence
which is claimed for this God can be exercised without producing
external reactions. Why, he is actually stated to be--like another
God, his near relative, whom he rather unkindly disowns--he is stated
to be "the light of the world" (p. 18). Is there any meaning in such a
statement if it be not pertinent to ask what sort of light has led the
world into the ghastly quagmire in which it is to-day agonizing? The
truth is that Mr. Wells attributes to his God powers which, even if he
had no greater knowledge than Mr. Wells himself possesses, could be
used to epoch-making advantage. Fancy an omnipresent H. G. Wells, able
to speak in a still small voice to all men of good-will throughout the
world! What a marvellous revolution might he not effect! Mr. Wells
himself has outlined such a revolution in one of his most thoughtful
romances, _In the Days of the Comet_. From the fact that it does not
occur, may we not fairly suspect that the Invisible King is a creation
of the same mythopoeic faculty which engendered the wonder-working
comet with its aura of sweet-reasonableness?

If we turn to Mr. Britling, we find that that eminent publicist was
distressed by a sense of the difficulty of conveying God's message to
the world; only he modestly attributed it to defects in his own
equipment rather than to powerlessness on the part of God. We read on
page 427:--"Never had it been so plain to Mr. Britling that he was a
weak, silly, ill-informed and hasty-minded writer, and never had he
felt so invincible a conviction that the Spirit of God was in him, and
that it fell to him to take some part in the establishment of a new
order of living upon the earth.... Always he seemed to be on the