ses of Secularist lecturers
(I have delivered some of them myself), who bore them at a length now
forbidden by custom in the established pulpit. Our minds have reacted so
violently towards provable logical theorems and demonstrable mechanical
or chemical facts that we have become incapable of metaphysical truth,
and try to cast out incredible and silly lies by credible and clever
ones, calling in Satan to cast out Satan, and getting more into his
clutches than ever in the process. Thus the world is kept sane less by
the saints than by the vast mass of the indifferent, who neither act nor
react in the matter. Butler's preaching of the gospel of Laodicea was a
piece of common sense founded on his observation of this.

But indifference will not guide nations through civilization to the
establishment of the perfect city of God. An indifferent statesman is a
contradiction in terms; and a statesman who is indifferent on principle,
a Laisser-faire or Muddle-Through doctrinaire, plays the deuce with us
in the long run. Our statesmen must get a religion by hook or crook; and
as we are committed to Adult Suffrage it must be a religion capable of
vulgarization. The thought first put into words by the Mills when they
said 'There is no God; but this is a family secret,' and long held
unspoken by aristocratic statesmen and diplomatists, will not serve now;
for the revival of civilization after the war cannot be effected by
artificial breathing: the driving force of an undeluded popular consent
is indispensable, and will be impossible until the statesman can appeal
to the vital instincts of the people in terms of a common religion. The
success of the Hang the Kaiser cry at the last General Election shews
us very terrifyingly how a common irreligion can be used by myopic
demagogy; and common irreligion will destroy civilization unless it is
countered by common religion.

THE DANGER OF REACTION

And here arises the danger that when we realize this we shall do just
what we did half a century ago, and what Pliable did in The Pilgrim's
Progress when Christian landed him in the Slough of Despond: that is,
run back in terror to our old superstitions. We jumped out of the
frying-pan into the fire; and we are just as likely to jump back again,
now that we feel hotter than ever. History records very little in the
way of mental activity on the part of the mass of mankind except a
series of stampedes from affirmative errors into negative ones