! Why, sir, you know you would die to save the lives of
five little children--their bare carnal lives, mind you, to say nothing of
their immortal souls. I believe I'd die myself to save two thousand--I
_know_ I would to save three--if their faces were clean and they looked
funny enough and helpless. Here, in this morning's paper, a negro
labourer, going home from his work in New York yesterday, pushed into
safety one of those babies that are always crawling around on railroad
tracks. He had time to see that he could get the baby off but not himself,
and then he went ahead. Doubtless it was a very common baby, and certainly
he was a very common man. Why, I could go down to Sing Sing tomorrow, and
I'll stake my own soul that in the whole cageful of criminals there isn't
one who would not eagerly submit to crucifixion if he believed that he
would thereby ransom the race from hell. And he wouldn't want the power to
damn the unbelievers, either. He would insist upon saving them with the
others."

"Oh, God, forgive this insane passion in my boy!"

"It was passion, sir--" he spoke with a sudden relenting--"but try to
remember that I've sought the truth honestly."

"You degrade the Saviour."

"No; I only raise man out of the muck of Christian belief about him. If
common men all might live lives of greater sacrifice than Jesus did,
without any pretensions to the supernatural, it only means that we need a
new embodiment for our ideals. If we find it in man--in God's creature--so
much the better for man and so much the more glory to God, who has not
then bungled so wretchedly as Christianity teaches."

"God forgive you this tirade--I know it is the sickness."

"I shall try to speak calmly, sir--but how much longer can an educated
clergy keep a straight face to speak of this wretchedly impotent God?
Christians of a truth have had to bind their sense of humour as the
Chinese bound their women's feet. But the laugh is gathering even now.
Your religion is like a tree that has lain long dead in the forest--firm
wood to the eye but dust to the first blow. And this is how it will
go--from a laugh--not through the solemn absurdities of the so-called
higher criticism, the discussing of this or that miracle, the tracing of
this or that myth of fall or deluge or immaculate conception or trinity to
its pagan sources; not that way, when before the inquiring mind rises the
sheer materialism of the Christian dogma, bristling with absurditie