It had its Utilitarians, its Christian Socialists, its Fabians
(still extant): it had Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Ruskin, Carlyle,
Butler, Henry George, and Morris. And the end of all their
efforts is the Chicago described by Mr Upton Sinclair, and the
London in which the people who pay to be amused by my dramatic
representation of Peter Shirley turned out to starve at forty
because there are younger slaves to be had for his wages, do not
take, and have not the slightest intention of taking, any
effective step to organize society in such a way as to make that
everyday infamy impossible. I, who have preached and
pamphleteered like any Encyclopedist, have to confess that my
methods are no use, and would be no use if I were Voltaire,
Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin, George,
Butler, and Morris all rolled into one, with Euripides, More,
Moliere, Shakespear, Beaumarchais, Swift, Goethe, Ibsen, Tolstoy,
Moses and the prophets all thrown in (as indeed in some sort I
actually am, standing as I do on all their shoulders). The
problem being to make heroes out of cowards, we paper apostles
and artist-magicians have succeeded only in giving cowards all
the sensations of heroes whilst they tolerate every abomination,
accept every plunder, and submit to every oppression.
Christianity, in making a merit of such submission, has marked
only that depth in the abyss at which the very sense of shame is
lost. The Christian has been like Dickens' doctor in the debtor's
prison, who tells the newcomer of its ineffable peace and
security: no duns; no tyrannical collectors of rates, taxes, and
rent; no importunate hopes nor exacting duties; nothing but the
rest and safety of having no further to fall.

Yet in the poorest corner of this soul-destroying Christendom