ss," there surged and rolled around them the stunted, poisoned,
and emaciated life of London.

Holiness!--Holiness in the Strand, in Piccadilly, in Houndsditch, in
Whitechapel, in Park Lane, in Somerstown, and the Mint.

Holiness!--In Westminster, and in Fleet Street, and on 'Change.

Holiness!--In a world given over to robbery, to conquest, to vanity, to
ignorance, to humbug, to the worship of the golden calf.

Holiness!--With twelve millions of our workers on the verge of famine,
with rich fools and richer rogues lording it over nations of untaught
and half-fed dupes and drudges.

Holiness!--With a recognised establishment of manufactured paupers,
cripples, criminals, idlers, dunces, and harlots.

Holiness!--In a garden of weeds, a hotbed of lies, where hypnotised
saints sing psalms and worship ghosts, while dogs and horses are
pampered and groomed, and children are left to rot, to hunger, and to
sink into crime, or shame, or the grave.

Holiness! For shame. The word is obnoxious. It has stood so long for
craven fear, for exotistical inebriation, for selfish retirement from
the trials and buffets and dirty work of the world.

What have we to do with such dreamy, self-centred, emotional holiness,
here and now in London?

What we want is citizenship, human sympathy, public spirit, daring
agitators, stern reformers, drains, houses, schoolmasters, clean water,
truth-speaking, soap--and Socialism.

Holiness! The people are being robbed. The people are being cheated. The
people are being lied to. The people are being despised and neglected
and ruined body and soul.

Yes. And you will find some of the greatest rascals and most impudent
liars in the "Synagogues and High Places" of the cities.

Holiness! Give us common sense, and common honesty, and a "steady supply
of men and women who can be trusted with small sums."

Your Christians talk of saving sinners. But our duty is not to save
sinners; but to prevent their regular manufacture: their systematic
manufacture in the interests of holy and respectable and successful and
superior persons.

Holiness! Cant, rant, and fustian! The nations are rotten with dirty
pride, and dirty greed, and mean lying, and petty ambitions, and
sickly sentimentality. Holiness! I should be ashamed to show my face at
Heaven's gates and say I came from such a contemptible planet.

Holiness! Your religion does not make it--its ethics are too weak, its
theories too unsound, its transc