s may
become respectable on account of age, that a certain reverence goes
with antiquity, and that if a mistake is covered with the moss of
sentiment it is altogether more credible than a parvenu fact. They
endeavor to introduce the idea of aristocracy into the world of
thought, believing, and honestly believing, that a falsehood long
believed is far superior to a truth that is generally denied.

_Question_. If Robert Elsmere's views were commonly adopted what
would be the effect?

_Answer_. The new religion of Elsmere is, after all, only a system
of outdoor relief, an effort to get successful piracy to give up
a larger per cent. for the relief of its victims. The abolition
of the system is not dreamed of. A civilized minority could not
by any possibility be happy while a majority of the world were
miserable. A civilized majority could not be happy while a minority
were miserable. As a matter of fact, a civilized world could not
be happy while one man was really miserable. At the foundation of
civilization is justice--that is to say, the giving of an equal
opportunity to all the children of men. Secondly, there can be no
civilization in the highest sense until sympathy becomes universal.
We must have a new definition for success. We must have new ideals.
The man who succeeds in amassing wealth, who gathers money for
himself, is not a success. It is an exceedingly low ambition to
be rich to excite the envy of others, or for the sake of the vulgar
power it gives to triumph over others. Such men are failures. So
the man who wins fame, position, power, and wins these for the sake
of himself, and wields this power not for the elevation of his
fellow-men, but simply to control, is a miserable failure. He may
dispense thousands of millions in charity, and his charity may be
prompted by the meanest part of his nature--using it simply as a
bait to catch more fish and to prevent the rising tide of indignation
that might overwhelm him. Men who steal millions and then give a
small percentage to the Lord to gain the praise of the clergy and
to bring the salvation of their souls within the possibilities of
imagination, are all failures.

Robert Elsmere gains our affection and our applause to the extent
that he gives up what are known as orthodox views, and his wife
Catherine retains our respect in the proportion that she lives the
doctrine that Elsmere preaches. By doing what she believes to be
right, she gains o