. The
world, in fact, was too much with them. So also did Christ teach; and
as the Franciscans modified their master's precepts, so did Saint Paul
his.

Twice, then, the world has been demonstrably wrong. Is it a
possibility that Christ and St. Francis can be proved to have been
right? To those who say, as Mr. Clutton-Brock does, that Christianity
has failed, I should like to retort, "Let Christianity be tried."
Poverty is of the essence of it, and luckily for us poverty is coming
upon us, nation and individuals, whether we deserve it or not. When we
are all really poor together--in heart as well as purse--we shall have
the chance of a common religion, but not till then. Now, then, comes
the question: Can the high in heart become poor in heart, or the
high-minded humble themselves? If it is hard for the man rich in goods
to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, is it not still harder for the man
stored with knowledge? How are Mr. Clutton-Brock and the Hibbert
Lecturer to become as little children? How will Mr. Wells manage it?
He, too, is in the stream, splashing about and apparently enjoying
himself. But you may call an invisible God an invisible king, if you
please, and yet be no nearer the heart of the matter. A change of
definitions will not do it. And what of Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Conan
Doyle? Are their outpourings symptomatic? I don't myself think so.
They are concerned with a future life, whereas those who seek a common
religion will take no account of life at all, past, present or to
come, once they have found the Kingdom of Heaven. Those eloquent and
(I trust) sincere gospellers are agog to dispel that sense of loss
which besets us just now. It is not that we fear death so much, but
that we miss the dead--and no wonder. Hence these prophets crying Lo
here! and Lo there! That they have reassured many I know well, that
they have baffled others I know also, for they have baffled me. My
puzzle is that, with evidence of authenticity difficult to withstand,
the things they can find to report are so trivial. The test of a
revelation I take to be exactly the same as the test of a good poem.
It doesn't much matter whether the thing revealed is new or not. Is it
so revealed that we needs must believe it? Relevance is to the point,
compatibility is to the point. But when Sir Oliver Lodge's medium puts
whisky and cigars into the mouth of the dead, we don't laugh: it is
too serious for that. We change the conversation.

Steadf