remaining. Men not acknowledging themselves to
be His followers, defiantly proclaiming that they are not His
followers, that they can hardly be even interested in Him, are yet
perpetually returning, in what they themselves will confess as their
higher moments, to the thought of {189} Him, trying to make plain why
it is that for them there is in Him no beauty that they should desire
Him. For example, this is how Mr. H. G. Wells, the popular author of
so many imaginative works, attempts frankly to explain his attitude:

'I hope I shall offend no susceptibilities when I assert that this
great and very definite Personality in the hearts and imaginations of
mankind does not, and never has, attracted me. It is a fact I record
about myself without aggression or regret. I do not find myself able
to associate him in any way with the emotion of salvation.' But Mr.
Wells goes on to say: 'I admit the splendid imaginative appeal in the
idea of a divine human friend and mediator. If it were possible to
have access by prayer, by meditation, by urgent outcries of the soul,
to such a being whose feet were in the darknesses, who stooped down
from the light, who was at once great and little, limitless in power
{190} and virtue, and one's very brother; if it were possible by sheer
will in believing to make and make one's way to such a helper, who
would refuse such help? But I do not find such a being in Christ. I
do not find, I cannot imagine such a being. I wish I could. To me the
Christian Christ seems not so much a humanised God as an
incomprehensibly sinless being, neither God nor man. His sinlessness
wears his incarnation like a fancy dress, all his white self unchanged.
He had no petty weaknesses. Now the essential trouble of my life is
its petty weaknesses. If I am to have that love, that sense of
understanding fellowship which is, I conceive, the peculiar magic and
merit of this idea of a Personal Saviour, then I need some one quite
other than this image of virtue, this terrible and incomprehensible
Galilean with his crown of thorns, his bloodstained hands and feet. I
cannot love him any more than I can love a man {191} upon the rack.'
'The Christian's Christ is too fine for me, not incarnate enough, not
flesh enough, not earth enough. He was never foolish and hot-eared and
inarticulate, never vain, he never forgot things, nor tangled his
miracles.'[7]

There is no disputing about tastes; and it is impossible to ref