es and prevents one seeing just how
much they mean at first. It is true that religion culminates in human
sacrifice both here and in Africa, and, for refinement of horror, we
have here the literal bloody sacrifice of a son by his father. But
that is not God, as you say; that is the ultimate of the priest. And
the priest is the same at all times, in all ages, beneath all veneers
of civilisation. His credit depends upon a pretence to power. He is
not a humble seeker after truth, but a bigoted upholder of error and
an impudent time-server. He destroys the scientific discoverer in one
age; in the next he finds his own existence is threatened because he
refuses to acknowledge that the discoverer was right; then he
confesses the truth, and readjusts his hocus-pocus to suit it. He does
not ask us to pin our faith to fancies which seem real to a child in
its infancy, yet he would have us credulous about those which were the
outcome of the intellectual infancy of the race. What he can't get
over in himself is the absence of any sense of humour. I'm real sorry
for him at times, and I tell him so."

Beth smiled. "I could not be so kindly courteous," she said. "Some
things make me fierce. The kingdom of heaven is or is not within us, I
believe; and half the time I know it is not in me, because there is no
room for anything in me but the hate and rage that rend me for horror of
all the falsehood, injustice, and misery I know of and cannot prevent. A
sense of humour would save the church perhaps; but I'm too sore to see
it. All I can say is: your religion to me is horrifying--human sacrifice
and devil-worship, survivals from an earlier day welded on to our own
time, and assorting ill with it. I would not accept salvation at the
hands of such futile omnipotence, such cruel mercy, such blood-stained
justice. The sight of suffering was grateful to man when the world was
young, as it still is to savages; but we revolt from it now. We should
not be happy in heaven, as the saved were said to be in the old tales,
within sight of the sinners suffering in hell."

"Which is to say that there is more of Christ in us now than there was
in the days of old," he said, speaking dispassionately, and with the
confident deliberation of one who takes time to think. "I believe
those old tales were founded on muddle-headed confusion of mind in the
days when dreams were as real to mankind as the events of life. There
are obscure tribes still on earth who