th lay away from this world, that I must renounce every
desire which I had learned to call good, that I must strip my soul naked
of all this civilisation which we have woven in a loom of three thousand
years. The dying command of Buddha terrified me: "All things pass away;
work out your own salvation diligently!" The words were spoken to comfort
and strengthen the bereaved disciples, but to me they sounded as an
imprecation, so different is the training of our society from theirs. The
loneliness and austerity of the command appalled me; I would not take the
first step, and turned back to seek the beautiful things of the eye.

And now at last I am caught up in the illusion of a new Western ideal--not
Christianity, for that has passed away, strange as such a statement may
sound to you in your orthodox home, but yet a legacy of Christ. Thou shalt
love God with all thy heart and thy neighbour as thyself, was the law of
Christianity. We have forgotten God and the responsibility of the
individual soul to its own divinity; we have made a fetish of our
neighbour's earthly welfare. We are not Christians but humanitarians,
followers of a maimed and materialistic faith. This is the ideal of the
world to-day, and from it I see but one door of escape--and none but a
strong man shall open that door.

So I look at the world and life, but, even as I write, something like a
foreboding shudder comes over me. I think of your home and your father and
the straitness of the law under which you live, and I wonder whether after
all the ghost of that fierce theology is yet laid. Can it be that this law
which darkened my boyhood shall arise again and claim the joy of my
maturer years?

Alas, you who venture to trip so gayly about the rim of my shadow-land
with your brave incantations, behold what spirit of gloom and malignant
mutterings you have evoked from the night. I have written more than I
meant--too much, I fear.

XII

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR MR. TOWERS:

An evangelist has been here this week. He fell upon us like a howling
dervish who had fed fanaticisms on locusts and wild honey. And he has
stirred up the spiritual dust of this community by showing an intimacy
with God's plans in regard to us very disconcerting to credulously minded
sinners. As for me, I have passed this primer-state of religious emotion.
I am sure a kind God made me, and so I belong to Him, good or bad. In any
case I cannot change the whole spiritual