is a natural product of city life." This "tender thought"
was spoken in a voice "which sank almost to a whisper." Very naturally
it struck the interviewer as "the finest and most beautiful of Mr.
Hardie's utterances."

Both the interviewer and Mr. Keir Hardie forgot a fact of Christian
history. Christianity spread in the towns of the Roman Empire. The
pagans were the villagers--_paganus_ meaning a countryman or rustic.
Possibly some of the pagans said to themselves, "Ah, this Christianity
is a natural product of the towns."

The diagnosis is in both cases empirical. In a certain sense, however,
Mr. Keir Hardie has touched a truth. Progressive ideas must always
originate in the keen life of cities. But in another sense Mr. Keir
Hardie is mistaken. He seems to regard Atheism as a city malady, like
rickets and anemia. Now this is untrue. It is also absurd. Mr. Keir
Hardie would find a good many of these "afflicted" Atheists able to make
mincemeat of his "humanitarian Christianity of Christ." He would also
find, if he cared to look, a great many of them in the Socialist camp.
It would be rare sport to see Mr. Keir Hardie defending his "new school"
Christianity against the young bloods of the Fabian Society, though it
might necessitate the interference of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty.

But we do not wish to part from Mr. Keir Hardie in a spirit of sarcasm.
If he is a hopeless sentimentalist there is no more to be said; but, if
he is capable of reason in matters of religion, we appeal to him, in
all sincerity, not to press the new wine of Humanitarianism into the
old bottles of Christianity. He will only break the bottles and lose the
wine. We also implore him to cease talking nonsense about Christianity
being "a life, and not a doctrine." It never can be the one without
the other. Finally, we beg him to consider what is the real value of
Christianity if, after all these centuries, it is necessary to put
"humanitarian" in front of it, in order to give it a chance in decent
society.

BLESSED BE YE POOR.

A leading London newspaper, the _Daily Chronicle_, has recently opened
it columns to a discussion of the question, "Is Christianity Played
Out?" Mr. Robert Buchanan thinks that it is, and we are of the same
opinion. But in a certain sense Christianity is _not_ played out. To
use a common expression, "there's money in it." That is incontestable.
Despite the "poverty" of the "lower clergy," for whom so m