y love God it is
necessary that there should be not only a God to be loved, but a man to
love him. All those vague theosophical minds for whom the universe is an
immense melting-pot are exactly the minds which shrink instinctively
from that earthquake saying of our Gospels, which declare that the Son
of God came not with peace but with a sundering sword. The saying rings
entirely true even considered as what it obviously is; the statement
that any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as
true of democratic fraternity as of divine love; sham love ends in
compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in
bloodshed. Yet there is another and yet more awful truth behind the
obvious meaning of this utterance of our Lord. According to Himself the
Son was a sword separating brother and brother that they should for an
aeon hate each other. But the Father also was a sword, which in the
black beginning separated brother and brother, so that they should love
each other at last.

This is the meaning of that almost insane happiness in the eyes of the
mediaeval saint in the picture. This is the meaning of the sealed eyes of
the superb Buddhist image. The Christian saint is happy because he has
verily been cut off from the world; he is separate from things and is
staring at them in astonishment. But why should the Buddhist saint be
astonished at things? since there is really only one thing, and that
being impersonal can hardly be astonished at itself. There have been
many pantheist poems suggesting wonder, but no really successful ones.
The pantheist cannot wonder, for he cannot praise God or praise anything
as really distinct from himself. Our immediate business here however is
with the effect of this Christian admiration (which strikes outwards,
towards a deity distinct from the worshipper) upon the general need for
ethical activity and social reform. And surely its effect is
sufficiently obvious. There is no real possibility of getting out of
pantheism any special impulse to moral action. For pantheism implies in
its nature that one thing is as good as another; whereas action implies
in its nature that one thing is greatly preferable to another.
Swinburne in the high summer of his scepticism tried in vain to wrestle
with this difficulty. In "Songs before Sunrise," written under the
inspiration of Garibaldi and the revolt of Italy, he proclaimed the
newer religion and the purer God which should wi