aves from sin.

There is no ground left on which religion can appeal to the conscience
of such a generation. In the eighteenth century Wesley and Whitefield
sent through the decaying masses of England a vitalising breath as they
proclaimed the joyful gospel of deliverance from sin, and men arose
from the mire with lives transfigured. In our day religion can find no
such approach and no such triumph. For like the whispering of an idle
breeze is a proclamation of sin's forgiveness to those who know no sin.
For us it is but a childish malady which we have long outgrown. The
passion of sin forgiven will no longer thrill our souls.

III

And this life which our modern writers describe is one of appalling
dreariness. {160} As the new generation grow in knowledge every ideal
vanishes; as they move upward in the social scale they shut out God.
The Chapel loses its power; men wear Wesley's clothes but know not his
spirit. Arnold Bennett makes us see the dying epoch. He describes the
whole town assembled in the market-square to celebrate the centenary of
Sunday schools. The vast crowd sing 'Rock of Ages' and 'There is a
Fountain filled with Blood.' The volume of sound is overwhelming.
'Look at it,' says Edwin Clayhanger to Hilda Lessways; 'it only wants
the Ganges at the bottom of the square.' 'Even if we don't believe,'
she replies, 'we needn't make fun.' And amid the singing crowd, mocked
at and jostled, struggles Mr. Shushions, the oldest Sunday-school
teacher in the Five Towns, who long ago had rescued the Clayhangers
from the workhouse, but now had 'lived too long' and 'survived his
dignity.' 'The impression given was that the flesh would be unpleasant
and uncanny to the touch.' It is a grim {161} picture of an effete
life still moving, mummified and repulsive, among men.

The old ideal was dead; but there was no ideal new-born. Life was
dreary, but happiness was still pursued. When the family would move to
the new house where science surrounded them with all the appliances of
comfort and luxury, then Edwin Clayhanger was convinced he would find
happiness. The day comes and they move to the new house. But that
very morning there is a quarrel with his father. He had been ingenuous
enough to believe that the new house somehow would mean the rebirth of
himself and his family. 'Strange delusion! The bath-splashings and
the other things gave him no pleasure, because he was saying to himself
all the time,