f the matter when
he wrote ironically:--

It's a simple thing that I demand,
Though humble as can be--
A statement fair in my Maker's hand
To a gentleman like me--

A clean account, writ fair and broad,
And a plain apologee--
Or deevil a ceevil word to God
From a gentleman like me.

But why this irony? What an infinity of trouble and pain would have
been saved if such a "clean account, writ fair and broad," had been
vouchsafed, and had been found to tally with the facts! Nor have the
reputedly wise and good of this world seen any presumption in desiring
such a _communique_. Most of them thought they had received it, and
many wasted half their lives in attempting to reconcile new knowledge
with old ignorance, promulgated under the guarantee of God. I cannot
but think that the poet got nearer the heart of the matter who
wrote:--

Was Moses upon Sinai taught
How Sinai's mighty ribs were wrought?
Did Buddha, 'neath the bo-tree's shade,
Learn how the stars were poised and swayed?

Did Jesus still pain's raging storm,
And dower the world with chloroform?
Or Mahomet a jehad decree
'Gainst microbe-harboring gnat and flea?

Has revelation e'er revealed
Aught from its age and hour concealed?
Or miracle, since time began,
Conferred a single boon on Man?

Truly, we may agree with Mr. Wells that the Invisible King was
probably not in the secrets of the Veiled Being, else he could
scarcely have kept them so successfully. But have we any use for a God
who can teach us nothing? who has to be taught by us before he can do
anything worth mentioning? The old Gods who professed to teach were
much more rational in theory, if only their teaching had not been all
wrong. Man has built up his knowledge of the universe he lives in by
slow, laborious degrees, not helped, but constantly and cruelly
hindered, by his Gods. Yet Mr. Wells will surely not deny that an
approximately true conception of the process of nature, and of his own
origin and history, was an indispensable basis for all right and
lasting social construction. What colossal harm has been wrought, for
instance, by the fairy-tale of the Fall, and all its theological
consequences! Yet, age after age, the Invisible King did nothing to
shake its calamitous prestige. Of late it is true that the progress of
knowledge has seemed no longer slow, but amazingly rapid; but that is
because the amount of energy devoted to it has bee