at future when Christ's Kingdom comes
on earth in the consecrated hearts and wills of all mankind, when all
the superimposed efforts will be unnecessary. But love builds for a
future, however remote; and at present we see no other way than to
work for it, and know of no better means than to insure the permanency
of the hospitals, orphanage, school, and the industrial and
cooperative enterprises, thus to hasten, however little, the coming of
Christ in Labrador.

CHAPTER XXVII

MY RELIGIOUS LIFE

No one can write his real religious life with pen or pencil. It is
written only in actions, and its seal is our character, not our
orthodoxy. Whether we, our neighbour, or God is the judge, absolutely
the only value of our "religious" life to ourselves or to any one is
what it fits us for and enables us to do. Creeds, when expressed only
in words, clothes, or abnormal lives, are daily growing less
acceptable as passports to Paradise. What my particular intellect can
accept cannot commend me to God. His "well done" is only spoken to the
man who "wills to do His will."

We map the world out into black and white patches for "heathen" and
"Christian"--as if those who made the charts believed that one section
possessed a monopoly of God's sonship. Europe was marked white, which
is to-day comment enough on this division. A black friend of mine used
often to remind me that in his country the Devil was white.

My own religious experiences divide my life into three periods. As a
boy at school, and as a young man at hospital, the truth or untruth of
Christianity as taught by the churches did not interest me enough to
devote a thought to it. It was neither a disturbing nor a vital
influence in my life. My mother was my ideal of goodness. I have never
known her speak an angry or unkind word. Sitting here looking back on
over fifty years of life, I cannot pick out one thing to criticize in
my mother.

What did interest me was athletics. Like most English boys I almost
worshipped physical accomplishments. I had the supremest contempt for
clothes except those designed for action or comfort. Since no saint
apparently ever wore trousers, or appeared to care about football
knickers, I never supposed that they could be the same flesh as myself.
It was always a barrier between me and the parsons and religious persons
generally that they affected clothing which dubbed my ideals "worldly."
It was even a barrier between myself and the C