rporation
of the motives of his life into an undying purpose, and then the
defeat of that death which seems to threaten our species upon a
cooling planet beneath a cooling sun" (p. 99). Ultimately, then, it
would seem that God does intend to undertake the control of
phenomena. Dealing with ice-caps is not so entirely outside his
province as one had hastily assumed. The Invisible King is not, after
all, a _roi faineant_. He will begin to do things as soon as he knows
how: any other course would be obviously rash. One would like to live
a few hundred thousand years, to see him come into overt action. Yet,
in this far-reaching program, there seems to lurk a certain
contradiction, or at least an ambiguity. If, for the believer in God,
death has, here and now, lost its sting--if "we come staggering
through into the golden light of his kingdom, to fight for his kingdom
henceforth, until, at last, we are altogether taken up into his being"
(p. 68)--one does not quite see the reason for this long campaign
against death. Surely the logical consummation would be an ultimate
racial euthanasia, an absorption of humanity into God, a vast
apotheosis-nirvana, after which the earth and sun could go on cooling
at their leisure.

* * * * *

Apart from one or two irrepressible "asides," I have attempted in this
chapter to let Mr. Wells speak for himself, proclaim the faith that is
in him, and draw the portrait of his God. Many details are of course
omitted, for which the reader must turn to the original text. He will
find it a pleasant and profitable task. The remainder of my present
undertaking falls into three parts. First I must ask the reader to
consider with me whether Mr. Wells's gospel can be accepted as a real
addition to knowledge, like (say) the discovery of radium, or whether
it is only a re-description in new language (or old language slightly
refurbished) of familiar facts of spiritual experience. In the second
place, assuming that we have to fall back on the latter alternative,
we shall enquire whether anything would be gained by the general
acceptance of this new-old, highly emotionalized terminology. Thirdly,
I shall venture to suggest that when Mr. Wells says "The first purpose
of God is the attainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a means
to more knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power," he is only
choosing a mythological way of expressing the fact that if God (in the
ordin