once they are bamboozled, it passes the wit
of man to debamboozle them again. The scientific crowd bowed God out a
generation ago; but to bow Him in again is beyond them. And the spirit
of the crowd is left to-day without curb or chain from Siberia to Cork.

IV

There are few sadder thoughts than this--to think how the Church has
thrown away the power that once it knew how to use, the mesmeric
instinct of the crowd. 'In our State,' said an American, 'the devil is
fighting hard against the Church!' 'Ah! in Montana it is different,'
was the reply; 'there with us, the devil is running the Church.' It
would look as if it were even so. Wherever there was a crowd waiting
anywhere on the ministry of the Gospel, the devil set himself to break
up that crowd. He did it in ways most skilful. Had his true
personality appeared, he would instantly have been cast forth. It was
therefore apparelled as an angel of light that he set about the work.
He never failed to mouth high-sounding phrases. His favourite
watchword was principle. It did not matter much what the principle was
if only thereby the crowd could be broken up. In the beginning of the
seventeenth century the evangel of Jesus, that was committed to the
winds of Galilee and to a handful of peasants, was intellectualised
into a massive system of propositions that was to be for all time the
test of orthodoxy. One might smile if the fountain of tears lay not
here. That religion, which is like the wind blowing where it listeth,
was caught at last, and embodied in legal enactments and
formulas--sheltered behind statistics! Whoever heard of wind blowing
through legal documents? Build shelters and there is no more wind!
Yet these legal documents became the test of that religion which is
life and which is love. If any doubt was expressed about the use of
shelters when men needed the fresh breeze from heaven--then the devil
appeared and said that to abide by the shelter was a principle. Nobody
must touch or change that structure. If that be done, then those who
were loyal must separate. By a discreet use of the principle of
loyalty to confessions the devil broke up crowd after crowd of
worshipping Christians. There was nothing that he could not use for
that purpose. The doubt arose whether the all-loving Father could
really send babes to everlasting torments or decree that the vast
majority of mankind be tortured, for ever and ever. That was used to
break up