conviction of sin under the skilled treatment of Barbara.
Straightway he begins to try to unassault the lass and
deruffianize his deed, first by getting punished for it in kind,
and, when that relief is denied him, by fining himself a pound to
compensate the girl. He is foiled both ways. He finds the
Salvation Army as inexorable as fact itself. It will not punish
him: it will not take his money. It will not tolerate a redeemed
ruffian: it leaves him no means of salvation except ceasing to be
a ruffian. In doing this, the Salvation Army instinctively
grasps the central truth of Christianity and discards its central
superstition: that central truth being the vanity of revenge and
punishment, and that central superstition the salvation of the
world by the gibbet.

For, be it noted, Bill has assaulted an old and starving woman
also; and for this worse offence he feels no remorse whatever,
because she makes it clear that her malice is as great as his
own. "Let her have the law of me, as she said she would," says
Bill: "what I done to her is no more on what you might call my
conscience than sticking a pig." This shows a perfectly natural
and wholesome state of mind on his part. The old woman, like the
law she threatens him with, is perfectly ready to play the game
of retaliation with him: to rob him if he steals, to flog him if
he strikes, to murder him if he kills. By example and precept the
law and public opinion teach him to impose his will on others by
anger, violence, and cruelty, and to wipe off the moral score by
punishment. That is sound Crosstianity. But this Crosstianity has
got entangled with something which Barbara calls Christianity,
and which unexpectedly causes her to refuse to play the hangman's
game of Satan casting out Satan. She refuses to prosecute a