than do
omnipotence and omniscience with the theology of Mr. Wells. But these
passages do not embarrass Mr. Shaw. He simply points out that, at
Matthew xvi, 16, where Peter hailed him as "the Christ, the Son of the
living God," Jesus went mad. Up to that fatal moment "his history is
that of a man sane and interesting apart from his special gifts as
orator, healer and prophet"; but from that point onward he set to work
to live up to "his destiny as a god," part of which was to be killed
and to rise again. Many other prophets have gone mad--for instance,
Ruskin and Nietzsche. Therefore we can have no difficulty in simply
eliminating as a morbid aberration whatever is un-Shavian in the
message of Jesus, and accepting the rest as the sincere milk of the
word. Mr. Shaw's attempt to place his philosophy under divine
patronage is not so serious as Mr. Wells's; for Mr. Shaw can never
take himself quite seriously for five pages together. But the motive,
in each case, in manifestly the same--to obtain for a system of ideas
the prestige, the power of insinuation, penetration, and stimulation,
that attaches to the very name of religion.

The notion is a very tempting one. What every prophet wants, in the
babel of latter-day thought, is a magic sounding-board which shall
make his voice carry to the ends of the earth and penetrate to the
dullest understanding. The more he believes in his own reason, the
more he yearns for some method of out-shouting the unreason of his
neighbours. German philosophy thought it had discovered the ideal
reverberator in the artillery of Herr Krupp von Bohlen; but the world
is curiously indisposed to conversion by cannon, and has retorted in a
still louder roar of high-explosive arguments. God, as a
politico-philosophical ally, is certainly cheaper than Herr Krupp;
and, divested of his mediaeval sword and tinder-box, he is decidedly
humaner. But is the glamour of his name quite what it once was? Or can
it be restored to its pristine potency?

On a question, such as this, on which the evidence is too vague, too
voluminous and too complex to be interpreted with any certainty, our
wishes are apt to take control of our thoughts. Making all allowance
for this source of error, I nevertheless venture to suggest to Mr.
Wells that we may perhaps be passing out of, not into, an age of
religiosity. May it not be that the time has come to give the name of
God a rest? Is it not possible, and even probable, that, whi