eople's lives, and amuses himself
with killing as carelessly as with sparing, is the sort of
monster you can make of any silly-clever gentleman by idolizing
him. We are still so easily imposed on by such idols that one of
the leading pastors of the Free Churches in London denounced my
play on the ground that my persecuting Emperor is a very fine
fellow, and the persecuted Christians ridiculous. From which I
conclude that a popular pulpit may be as perilous to a man's soul
as an imperial throne.

All my articulate Christians, the reader will notice, have
different enthusiasms, which they accept as the same religion
only because it involves them in a common opposition to the
official religion and consequently in a common doom. Androcles is
a humanitarian naturalist, whose views surprise everybody.
Lavinia, a clever and fearless freethinker, shocks the Pauline
Ferrovius, who is comparatively stupid and conscience ridden.
Spintho, the blackguardly debauchee, is presented as one of the
typical Christians of that period on the authority of St.
Augustine, who seems to have come to the conclusion at one period
of his development that most Christians were what we call wrong
uns. No doubt he was to some extent right: I have had occasion
often to point out that revolutionary movements attract those who
are not good enough for established institutions as well as those
who are too good for them.

But the most striking aspect of the play at this moment is the
terrible topicality given it by the war. We were at peace when I
pointed out, by the mouth of Ferrovius, the path of an honest man
who finds out, when the trumpet sounds, that he cannot follow
Jesus. Many years earlier, in The Devil's Disciple, I touched the
same theme even more definitely, and showed the minister throwing
off his black coat for ever when he discovered, amid the thunder
of the captains and the shouting, that he was a born fighter.
Great numbers of our clergy have found themselves of late in the
position of Ferrovius and Anthony Anderson. They have discovered
that they hate not only their enemies but everyone who does not
share their hatred, and that they want to fight and to force
other people to fight. They have turned their churches into
recruiting stations and their vestries into munition workshops.
But it has never occurred to them to take off their black coats
and say quite simply, "I find in the hour of trial that the
Sermon on the Mount is tosh, and