et of life and all knowledge."

"I used to think," I said, "that religion was like a noble and generous
boy with the lyrical heart of a poet, made by some sad chance into a
king, surrounded by obsequious respect and pomp and etiquette, bound by
a hundred ceremonious rules, forbidden to do this and that, taught to
think that his one duty was to be magnificently attired, to acquire
graceful arts of posture and courtesy, subtly and gently prevented from
obeying natural and simple impulses, made powerless--a crowned slave; so
that, instead of being the freest and sincerest thing in the world, it
became the prisoner of respectability and convention, just a part of the
social machine."

"That was only one side of it," said Amroth. "It was often where it was
least supposed to be."

"Yes," I said, "as far as I resent anything now, I resent the conversion
of so much religion from an inspiring force into a repressive force. One
learnt as a child to think of it, not as a great moving flood of energy
and joy, but as an awful power apart from life, rejoicing in petty
restrictions, and mainly concerned with creating an unreal atmosphere of
narrow piety, hostile to natural talk and laughter and freedom. God's
aid was invoked, in childhood, mostly when one was naughty and
disobedient, so that one grew to think of Him as grim, severe,
irritable, anxious to interfere. What wonder that one lost all wish to
meet God and all natural desire to know Him! One thought of Him as
impossible to please except by behaving in a way in which it was not
natural to behave; and one thought of religion as a stern and dreadful
process going on somewhere, like a law-court or a prison, which one had
to keep clear of if one could. Yet I hardly see how, in the interests of
discipline, it could have been avoided. If only one could have begun at
the other end!"

"Yes," said Amroth, "but that is because religion has fallen so much
into the hands of the wrong people, and is grievously misrepresented.
It has too often come to be identified, as you say, with human law, as a
power which leaves one severely alone, if one behaves oneself, and which
punishes harshly and mechanically if one outsteps the limit. It comes
into the world as a great joyful motive; and then it becomes identified
with respectability, and it is sad to think that it is simply from the
fact that it has won the confidence of the world that it gains its awful
power of silencing and oppressing. I