proval or disapproval of these creatures of
the conventions of the hour, as one figures the merciless vastness of
the universe of matter sweeping us headlong through viewless space; as
one hears the wail of misery that is for ever ascending to the deaf
gods; as one counts the little tale of the years that separate us from
eternal silence. In the light of these things, a man should surely dare
to live his small span of life with little heed of the common speech
upon him or his life, only caring that his days may be full of reality,
and his conversation of truth-speaking and wholeness.

Those who think conformity in the matters of which we have been
speaking harmless and unimportant, must do so either from indifference
or else from despair. It is difficult to convince any one who is
possessed by either one or other of these two evil spirits. Men who have
once accepted them, do not easily relinquish philosophies that relieve
their professors from disagreeable obligations of courage and endeavour.
To the indifferent person one can say nothing. We can only acquiesce in
that deep and terrible scripture, 'He that is filthy, let him be filthy
still.' To those who despair of human improvement or the spread of light
in the face of the huge mass of brute prejudice, we can only urge that
the enormous weight and the firm hold of baseless prejudice and false
commonplace are the very reasons which make it so important that those
who are not of the night nor of the darkness should the more strenuously
insist on living their own lives in the daylight. To those, finally, who
do not despair, but think that the new faith will come so slowly that it
is not worth while for the poor mortal of a day to make himself a
martyr, we may suggest that the new faith when it comes will be of
little worth, unless it has been shaped by generations of honest and
fearless men, and unless it finds in those who are to receive it an
honest and fearless temper. Our plea is not for a life of perverse
disputings or busy proselytising, but only that we should learn to look
at one another with a clear and steadfast eye, and march forward along
the paths we choose with firm step and erect front. The first advance
towards either the renovation of one faith or the growth of another,
must be the abandonment of those habits of hypocritical conformity and
compliance which have filled the air of the England of to-day with gross
and obscuring mists.

FOOTNOTES:

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