e world such as history had never before known,
that men no longer lived free and independent lives of their own,
but had been persuaded to contribute all that made them men to
the Society which they composed.

He perceived now clearly that it was this forced contribution
that he hated---this merging of the individual in the body, and
the body one of principles that were at once precise and
immutable. It was the extinction of Self.

Then, almost without perceiving the connection, he turned in his
mind to Christianity as he conceived it to be--to his ideal
figure of Christ; and in an instant he saw the contrast, and why
it was that the moral instinct within him loathed and resented
this modern Christian State.

For it was a gentle Figure that stood to him for Christ--God?
yes, in some profound and mysterious way, but, for all earthly
purposes of love and imitation, a meek and persuasive Man whose
kingdom was not of this world, who repudiated violence and
inculcated love; One who went through the world with simple tasks
and soft words, who suffered without striking, who obeyed with no
desire to rule.

And what had this tranquil, tolerant Figure in common with the
strong discipline of this Church that bore His name--a Church
that had waited so long, preaching His precepts, until she grew
mighty and could afford to let them drop: this Church which,
after centuries of blood and tears, at last had laid her hands
upon the sceptre, and ruled the world with whom she had pleaded
in vain so long; this Church who, after two thousand years of
pain, had at last put her enemies under her feet--"repressed" the
infidel and killed the heretic?

And so the interior conflict went on within this man, who found
within him a Christianity with which the Christian world in which
he lived had no share or part. He still stared out in the soft
autumn night at the huge quiet city, his chin on his hands and
his elbows on the parapet, half perceiving the parable at which
he looked. Once it was this river beneath him that had made the
city; now the city set the river within bars and ordered its
goings. Once it was Christianity--the meek and gentle spirit of
Christ--that had made civilization; now civilization had fettered
Christianity in unbreakable chains. . . . Yet even as he resented
and rebelled, he felt he dared not speak. There were great forces
about him, forces he had experienced for himself--Science tamed
at last, self-control, organ