ness?

All this talk about "the sublime figure of Christ" is a reminiscence
of his faded deity. We do not indulge in heated discussions as to the
personality of any other _man_. We speak of other "sublime" figures, but
the expression is one of individual reverence. We do not say that those
who do not share our opinion of Buddha, Socrates, Mohammed, Bruno,
Cromwell, Danton, or even Plato or Shakespeare, are grovelling
materialists and candidates for perdition. No, the chatter about Christ
is only explicable on the ground that he was, and still is by millions,
worshipped as a god. The glamor of the deity lingers round the form of
the man.

It is impossible for persons of any logical trenchancy to remain in
this stage. Francis Newman gave up orthodox Christianity, and also the
equivocations of Unitarianism, but he clung to "the moral perfection of
Christ." In the course of time, however, the scales fell from his eyes.
He had been blinded by a false sentiment. Letting his mind play freely
upon the "sublime figure" of the Prophet of Nazareth, he at length
perceived that it had its defects. No mortal is endowed with perfection.
Such monsters do not exist. Indeed, the teaching of Christ is as
defective as his personality, Its perfection and sufficiency can only be
maintained by those who never mean to incur the perils of reducing it to
practice. Who really tries to carry out the Christianity of Christ? Only
one man in Europe that we know of, and his name is Count Tolstoi; but
he is saved from the worst consequences of his "idealism" by the more
practical wisdom of his wife, who will not see him, any more than
herself and her children, reduced to godly beggary.

Mr. Le Gallienne seems to us to belong to the sentimentalists, though
we hope he will grow out of their category. He appears to dread accurate
thinking, and to imagine that knowledge destroys the charm of nature.
"Which," he asks, "comes nearest to the truth about love--poor
Lombroso's talk about pistil and stamen, or one of Shakespeare's
sonnets?" The root, he says, is no explanation of the flower.

This may be fine, but it is fine nonsense. Lombroso and Shakespeare are
both right. The physician does not contradict the poet. And if the root
is no explanation of the flower, what will happen if you are careless
about the root and the soil in which it is planted? Does a gardener act
in that way? Is it not the horticulture of Fleet-street sentimentalists?

Mr. Le Gall