called Christ. This step which I have taken has brought upon me considerable adverse criticism, the purport of which, although stated by various writers in different ways, is especially well embodied in characteristic comments by two of my critics. I will cite first a passage from Mr Chesterton, as in replying to it I shall have an opportunity for throwing further light upon my own position :

Of course [says Mr Chesterton], we do use religious or mythological terms with reference only to an abstract spirit or agency. But generally this is only done with dead religions or mythologies. Thus, offering our children to Moloch now only means offering them to cruelty and destruction; but if there were really a little temple of Moloch in Battersea, with a corrugated iron roof, we might avoid the term as confusing. Or again, our lighter journalism still talks (I regret to say) about the darts of Cupid; but if there really were an important Nonconformist sect which believed in the positive personal existence of Cupid, we should find it necessary to make a distinction. The whole of Dr Coit's proposals for loosening or expanding the sense of words is really founded on the assumption that Christ is as dead as Moloch or Cupid. That is where he makes a mistake.

In reply, I wish first to point out the lack of intimacy with other religions than his own which Mr Chesterton seems to betray. I had thought that Greek scholars were agreed that the ancient Greek religion and mythology are not dead. For instance, Mr Sidney Colvin, in commenting upon Keats's use of Greek themes, speaks almost with pity of those who hold the view to which Mr Chesterton apparently commits himself, for he believes that it is they that are dead, and not the Greek mythology. "Critics," says Mr Colvin

even intelligent critics, sometimes complain that Keats should have taken subjects of his art from what they

call the "dead" mythology of ancient Greece. As if that mythology could ever die as if the ancient fables, in passing out of the transitory state of things believed, into the state of things remembered and cherished in imagination, had not put on a second life more enduring and more fruitful than the first. Faiths, as faiths, perish one after another; but each in passing away bequeaths for the enrichment of the after-world whatever elements it has contained of imaginative or moral truth or beauty. The polytheism of ancient Greece, embodying the instinctive effort of the brightliest-gifted human race to explain its earliest. experiences of nature and civilisation, of the thousand moral and material forces, cruel or kindly, which environ and control the life of man on earth, is rich beyond measure in such elements; and if the modern world at any time fails to value them, it is the modern mind which is in so far dead, and not they.

Now, I-acting on the principle so admirably expressed in these words of Mr Colvin's-would fain have helped to rescue the Christian religion from the death which minds in so far dead have imposed upon its abiding elements of imaginative and moral truth and beauty. I believe that Christianity is about to put on a second life, more enduring and more fruitful than the first; and I believe that those who bring this consummation to pass will be those for whom mythology can never die, because they see that it is a reference, poetic and inspiring, to "experiences of nature and civilisation, of the thousand moral and material forces, cruel or kindly, which environ and control the life of man on earth." Can Mr Chesterton really be in so far dead that he does not see this? Or is it possible that he is shamming death?

What Mr Colvin says is not the expression of a view peculiar to himself. Further on in these pages I cite a passage from Professor Gilbert Murray to the same effect, and possibly more pointed; and the mention of Professor

I other time

who treats Christian trms of Greek mythology,

sa es lations. I confess me is is the religion of

my mother way of saying

de ser una vividly alive; for I know on my Keats, my Shelley, my

34 vdes and my Plato-and not from

Now, however, we come to Moloch and Cupid. In meres one striking difference between Jesus LA DER RIs, to which I am surprised that Mr Ceran inset seems oblivious-else how could he blue se senge to me? He would place the three alle alegory as regards the reality of their vate de a my judgment Moloch never existed, C, is an individual human being living on os Jesus Christ-so I believe-did. I am Core, to learn that on my assumption Christ

s Moloch or Cupid. It is not true that a wes ved is afterwards dead in the sense in Here poetic personification of an abstract

of human nature is dead. When we of our children to Moloch, we not only wwe offer them to cruelty and destruction, but that Moloch never was anything else and destruction. When, however, we offer Jesus Christ, it is true that we are offering

them to the Redeemer-principle, universal and active to-day and for ever; but we also mean that we are leading them back to a distinct and real person in human history, embodied in literature, and traceable as originating or inspiring a great organised movement of religious life. It is as shocking, then, to my sense of truth and my gratitude to Jesus Christ as it must be to the most orthodox and conventional believer in him, to read that on my assumption he is as dead as Moloch or Cupid. It is as if somebody should tell me that in my view of English history Milton or Wordsworth had no other kind of reality and have no other sort of existence than such abstractions as liberty or justice or equality. These are by no means dead; but they do not belong to the same category of living realities as do the great men, whom I devoutly revere for that kind of suffering and that heroic bravery which one can never attribute either to an abstraction or to a poetic personification of an abstraction. The day will come-in the second and more fruitful life of Christianity-when men who hold my view of Jesus Christ will not tolerate so passively as they do now the spiritual airs which religious animists, in their contempt for Christian humanists, are wont to flaunt. It will be discovered that persons who have dropped the spiritistic theory of Christ's activity in the world to-day do something more than admire him as Mr Chesterton admires primroses; it will be seen that they live by him, draw strength, peace and hope from him, with as full an inflow of grace as the spiritists derive from him.

But let us now consider, in regard to Moloch, whether it would be expedient to avoid his name, were a little temple to him to be erected (with a corrugated iron roof) in Battersea. In my opinion, if there were a sect there

where temples, not merely

e tuman being in his earth-life, VON ROOence radiating from his to a discarnate spirit which

s sems to me an occasion for are human being in his earth

*Are

4 à la ric death, to set up in every 24mple where the name of Christ dorified, but explained not to

N WA, W DE LOS of Cupid, which Mr Chesterton

but

the lighter journalism that he should erect also a temple not MYONNNtion of man and woman, MY SEAT which it was believed actually JAN ANNANCY of Zortunate mortals and stirred these EMOONS IN NRR would the remnant of the sane