bsolutely nothing to do with the characteristic
doctrines of Jesus. The Holy Ghost may be at work all round producing
wonders of art and science, and strengthening men to endure all sorts
of martyrdoms for the enlargement of knowledge, and the enrichment and
intensification of life ("that ye may have life more abundantly"); but
the apostles, as described in The Acts, take no part in the struggle
except as persecutors and revilers. To this day, when their successors
get the upper hand, as in Geneva (Knox's "perfect city of Christ") and
in Scotland and Ulster, every spiritual activity but moneymaking and
churchgoing is stamped out; heretics are ruthlessly persecuted; and such
pleasures as money can purchase are suppressed so that its possessors
are compelled to go on making money because there is nothing else to do.
And the compensation for all this privation is partly an insane conceit
of being the elect of God, with a reserved seat in heaven, and partly,
since even the most infatuated idiot cannot spend his life admiring
himself, the less innocent excitement of punishing other people for not
admiring him, and the nosing out of the sins of the people who, being
intelligent enough to be incapable of mere dull self-righteousness, and
highly susceptible to the beauty and interest of the real workings
of the Holy Ghost, try to live more rational and abundant lives. The
abominable amusement of terrifying children with threats of hell is
another of these diversions, and perhaps the vilest and most mischievous
of them. The net result is that the imitators of the apostles,
whether they are called Holy Willies or Stigginses in derision, or, in
admiration, Puritans or saints, are, outside their own congregations,
and to a considerable extent inside them, heartily detested. Now nobody
detests Jesus, though many who have been tormented in their childhood in
his name include him in their general loathing of everything
connected with the word religion; whilst others, who know him only by
misrepresentation as a sentimental pacifist and an ascetic, include him
in their general dislike of that type of character. In the same way a
student who has had to "get up" Shakespear as a college subject may hate
Shakespear; and people who dislike the theatre may include Moliere in
that dislike without ever having read a line of his or witnessed one of
his plays; but nobody with any knowledge of Shakespear or Moliere could
possibly detest them, or rea