ch had driven
her underground; Muhammad barely escaped from Mecca with his life, but
returned to make it the centre of his creed, and Crusaders died in
hopeless defeat at Hattin cursing "Mahound" with their last breath as
the enemy of their faith, yet their very presence there showed how Islam
had revived Christianity.

_Per aspera ad astra:_ there is no easy road or short cut to collective,
spiritual progress. I am not arguing against possible "acts of grace"
working on individuals, but the uplift of a race, a class or even a
congregation cannot be done by a sort of spiritual legerdemain based on
hypnotic suggestion. Individuals may be so swayed for the time being,
and, in a few favourable cases, the initial impetus will be carried on,
but most human souls are like locusts and flutter earthward when the
wind drops. They may have advanced more or less, but are just as likely
to be deflected or even swept back again by a change in the wind.
Revivalist campaigns and salvation by a _coup de theatre_ do not
encourage consecutive religious thought, which is the only stable
foundation of religious belief; second-hand convictions do not wear well
in the storm and sunshine of unsheltered lives, and a creed that has to
be treated like an orchid is no use to anybody.

If the same amount of earnest, consecutive effort and clear thinking had
been applied to religion as has gone to build up civilisation we should
all be leading harmonious spiritual lives to-day and sin and sorrow
would probably have been banished from the earth, but few people think
of applying their mental faculties to religion, and its exploitation by
modern mercantile methods is not the same thing at all. Civilisation is
an accretion of countless efforts and ceaseless striving to ameliorate
existing conditions, whereas religion started as a perfect thesis and
has since got overgrown with human bigotry and fantasies while absorbing
very little of the vast, increasing store of human knowledge. That is
why civilisation has got so much in advance of religion that the latter
cannot lead or guide the former, but only lags behind, like a horse
hitched to a cart-tail. Missionary writers are rather apt to confuse the
gifts of civilisation with the thing itself. A savage can be taught to
use a rifle or an electric switch or even a flame-projecter, but this is
no proof that he is really civilised. On the other hand, the scholarly
recluse and philosopher whose works uplift