was it desirable to shake his congregation's belief in their
traditional divinity? He thought of them--so amiable, amusing,
spirited and generous, but utterly untrained for abstract
imaginative thought on any subject whatever. His own strange
surmisings about deity would only shock and horrify them And
after all, was it not exactly their simplicity that made them
lovable? The great laws of truth would work their own destinies
without assistance from him! Even if these pleasant creatures did
not genuinely believe the rites they so politely observed (he
knew they did not, for BELIEF is an intellectual process of
extraordinary range and depth), was it not socially useful that
they should pretend to do so?

And yet--with another painful swing of the mind--was it necessary
that Truth should be worshipped with the aid of such
astonishingly transparent formalisms, hoaxes, and mummeries?
Alas, it seemed that this was an old, old struggle that must be
troublesomely fought out, again and again down the generations.
Prophets were twice stoned--first in anger; then, after their
death, with a handsome slab in the graveyard. But words uttered
in sincerity (he thought) never fail of some response. Though he
saw his fellows leashed with a heavy chain of ignorance,
stupidity, passion, and weakness, yet he divined in life some
inscrutable principle of honour and justice; some unreckonable
essence of virtue too intimate to understand; some fumbling
aspiration toward decency, some brave generosity of spirit, some
cheerful fidelity to Beauty. He could not see how, in a world so
obviously vast and uncouth beyond computation, they could find a
puny, tidy, assumptive, scheduled worship so satisfying. But
perhaps, since all Beauty was so staggering, it was better they