al problems, with pride, with protest, and with
compassion. By defining its main doctrine, the Church not only kept
seemingly inconsistent things side by side, but, what was more, allowed
them to break out in a sort of artistic violence otherwise possible only
to anarchists. Meekness grew more dramatic than madness. Historic
Christianity rose into a high and strange _coup de theatre_ of
morality--things that are to virtue what the crimes of Nero are to vice.
The spirits of indignation and of charity took terrible and attractive
forms, ranging from that monkish fierceness that scourged like a dog the
first and greatest of the Plantagenets, to the sublime pity of St.
Catherine, who, in the official shambles, kissed the bloody head of the
criminal. Poetry could be acted as well as composed. This heroic and
monumental manner in ethics has entirely vanished with supernatural
religion. They, being humble, could parade themselves; but we are too
proud to be prominent. Our ethical teachers write reasonably for prison
reform; but we are not likely to see Mr. Cadbury, or any eminent
philanthropist, go into Reading Gaol and embrace the strangled corpse
before it is cast into the quicklime. Our ethical teachers write mildly
against the power of millionaires; but we are not likely to see Mr.
Rockefeller, or any modern tyrant, publicly whipped in Westminster
Abbey.

Thus, the double charges of the secularists, though throwing nothing
but darkness and confusion on themselves, throw a real light on the
faith. It _is_ true that the historic Church has at once emphasised
celibacy and emphasised the family; has at once (if one may put it so)
been fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children.
It has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white,
like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had
a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colours which
is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of
black into white which is tantamount to a dirty grey. In fact, the whole
theory of the Church on virginity might be symbolized in the statement
that white is a colour: not merely the absence of a colour. All that I
am urging here can be expressed by saying that Christianity sought in
most of these cases to keep two colours co-existent but pure. It is not
a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like a shot silk, for a
shot silk is always at rig