water Him down with gallons of long words, or
boil Him to the rags of metaphysics; and it is not merely that nobody
punishes, but nobody protests. But if you speak of God as a fact, as a
thing like a tiger, as a reason for changing one's conduct, then the
modern world will stop you somehow if it can. We are long past talking
about whether an unbeliever should be punished for being irreverent. It
is now thought irreverent to be a believer. I end where I began: it is
the old Puritan in Shaw that jars the modern world like an electric
shock. That vision with which I meant to end, that vision of culture and
common-sense, of red brick and brown flannel, of the modern clerk
broadened enough to embrace Shaw and Shaw softened enough to embrace the
clerk, all that vision of a new London begins to fade and alter. The red
brick begins to burn red-hot; and the smoke from all the chimneys has a
strange smell. I find myself back in the fumes in which I started....
Perhaps I have been misled by small modernities. Perhaps what I have
called fastidiousness is a divine fear. Perhaps what I have called
coldness is a predestinate and ancient endurance. The vision of the
Fabian villas grows fainter and fainter, until I see only a void place
across which runs Bunyan's Pilgrim with his fingers in his ears.

Bernard Shaw has occupied much of his life in trying to elude his
followers. The fox has enthusiastic followers, and Shaw seems to regard
his in much the same way. This man whom men accuse of bidding for
applause seems to me to shrink even from assent. If you agree with Shaw
he is very likely to contradict you; I have contradicted Shaw
throughout, that is why I come at last almost to agree with him. His
critics have accused him of vulgar self-advertisement; in his relation
to his followers he seems to me rather marked with a sort of mad
modesty. He seems to wish to fly from agreement, to have as few
followers as possible. All this reaches back, I think, to the three
roots from which this meditation grew. It is partly the mere impatience
and irony of the Irishman. It is partly the thought of the Calvinist
that the host of God should be thinned rather than thronged; that Gideon
must reject soldiers rather than recruit them. And it is partly, alas,
the unhappy Progressive trying to be in front of his own religion,
trying to destroy his own idol and even to desecrate his own tomb. But
from whatever causes, this furious escape from popularity h