nitude of wisdom and
love; _there is nothing else_"--the fact of evil has been triumphantly
got rid of. In words, that is to say, but not in reality; for in
reality there is a great deal else--sin, and shame, and remorse, and
heartbreak, and despair; against the first of which we need to be
warned, in order that we may escape the rest.

We are quite prepared to be told that our anxieties are groundless,
because "no one will ever draw such inferences as these." To this we
reply, firstly, that these are the logical and legitimate inferences
from the principles enunciated; and secondly, that we do not at all
share the particular kind of optimism which trusts that good luck will
prevent the application of these theories to practical life. We are
living in an age of wide-spread intellectual unsettlement, an age
presenting the difficult problem of a vast half-educated public, ready
to fall an easy prey to all manner of specious sophistries, especially
when they are dressed up in the garb of a pseudo-mysticism; we must
above all remember that human nature is habitually prone to welcome
whatever will serve as an excuse for throwing off the irksome
restraints of moral discipline. That is why we repeat that the one
real danger religion has to face to-day is the danger arising from the
spread of a false philosophy, whose tenets are ultimately incompatible
with Christian morals. The worst heresies are moral {63} heresies; and
of the views we have been discussing we say roundly that their
falseness is sufficiently proved by their ethical implications. "A
good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; therefore by their fruits ye
shall know them." Against all the insidious attempts that are made
to-day to minimise or explain away moral evil--attempts with which we
shall deal in greater detail at a later stage--we have to reaffirm the
reality and exceeding sinfulness of sin; more particularly, in
combating the preposterous notion of man's oneness with God as
something already realised, we have to insist with renewed emphasis
that salvation, so far from being self-understood, is a prize only to
be won by a hard struggle, nor shut the door upon the dread possibility
of that prize being missed. There are perhaps few truths to which it
is more desirable that we should pay renewed attention than that
expressed in the saying, "_When belief waxes unsound, practice becomes
uncertain._" Certainly, the ethics of Monism supply a case in point