ndon to Brighton, for at the end it is sated still.

With the shutting of the window towards the Infinite, all restraint
vanished. So long as there remained a sense of a moral order in the
universe which could only emanate from a Moral Governor, and so long as
the soul felt that the way of life lay in conformity to the will of the
Unseen Ruler, life was kept under control. The will never wholly
relaxed its effort to keep the outgoings of life {152} in unison with
God. But, then, there came the startling realisation that there was no
God, or, if there was, that He was a mere negligible factor. The
processes by which things came to be as they are could be explained;
and because they could be explained, of course, God had nothing to do
with them! God was steadily pushed further and further away. Back
from a mythical Eden some five thousand years ago, He was pushed into
the recesses of aeons that made the brain reel to contemplate; away from
a heaven which seemed quite near, He was removed far off into the
abysses of heavens which had become astronomical. Everything could be
explained--it was only a question of time when life would yield its
secret. As the universe grew wider and wider there was in it no place
for God. In that world which once He was deemed to have created, now
He was superfluous. And the restraints which the thought of Him
imposed were thrown to the winds. {153} History once more repeated
itself. 'They treat it,' wrote Bishop Butler of religion in his day,
'as if ... nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of
mirth and ridicule, as it were, by way of reprisals for its having so
long interrupted the pleasures of the world.' The dawn of the
twentieth century found a generation which far outstripped the
eighteenth. By its headlong plunge into the vortex of pleasure it was
determined to avenge itself for the days when life was disciplined by
the thought of the judgment-seat of God.

Alongside of this emancipation from the restraints of religion there
was a singular development of interest in religious matters. Never
were there so many books published regarding the sources of
Christianity and the authenticity of that various literature which
composes the Bible. And votaries went on incessantly tunnelling the
great barrier which shuts us in from what lies beyond the visible, and
they even heard, {154} as it were, the tapping of those who drove a
tunnel to meet them. But all tha