t these dry bones will live
again?" "I'm cock-sure of it," answers Mr. Laing, and the ground of his
assurance is the healthiness of his liver.

Carlyle, who in other matters is, according to Mr. Laing, a great
genius, a more than prophet of the new religion, on this point suddenly
collapses into "a dreadful croaker," styling his own age "barren,
brainless, soulless, faithless." [4] But the reason is, of course, that
"he suffered from chronic dyspepsia" and was unable "to eat his three
square meals a day." A very consistent explanation for an avowed
materialist, but slightly destructive to the value of his own
conclusions, being a two-edged sword. Indeed he almost allows as much.
"For such dyspeptic patients there is an excuse. Pessimism is probably
as inevitably their creed, as optimism is for the more fortunate mortals
who enjoy the _mens sana in corpore sano_." [5] However, there are some
pessimists for whom indigestion can plead no excuse, [6] but for whose
intellectual perversity some other cosmic influence must be sought
"behind the veil, behind the veil,"--to borrow Mr. Laing's favourite
line from his favourite poem. These are not only "social swells,
would-be superior persons and orthodox theologians, but even a man of
light and learning like Mr. F. Harrison." "Religion, they say, is
becoming extinct.... Without a lively faith in such a personal,
ever-present deity who listens to our prayers, ... there can be, they
say, no religion; and they hold, and I think rightly hold, that the only
support for such a religion is to be found in the assumed inspiration of
the Bible and the Divinity of Christ." "Destroy these and they think the
world will become vulgar and materialized, losing not only the surest
sanction of morals, but ... the spiritual aspiration and tendencies," &c.
[7] "To these gloomy forebodings I venture to return a positive and
categorical denial ... Scepticism has been the great sweetener of modern
life." [8] How he justifies his denial by maintaining that morality can
hold its own when reduced to a physical science; that the "result of
advancing civilization" and of the materialistic psychology is "a
clearer recognition of the intrinsic sacredness and dignity of every
human soul;" [9] that Christianity without dogma, without miracles [or,
as he calls it, "Christian agnosticism"], shall retain the essential
spirit, the pure morality, the consoling beliefs, and as far as possible
even the venerable form