Watts or
Messrs. Moody and Sankey. Never in the whole history of the world was
such a tremendous tribute paid to the vitality of an ancient creed.
Compared with this, it would be a small thing if the Red Sea were cloven
asunder, or the sun did stand still at midday. We are faced with the
phenomenon that a set of revolutionists whose contempt for all the
ideals of family and nation would evoke horror in a thieves' kitchen,
who can rid themselves of those elementary instincts of the man and the
gentleman which cling to the very bones of our civilisation, cannot rid
themselves of the influence of two or three remote Oriental anecdotes
written in corrupt Greek. The fact, when realised, has about it
something stunning and hypnotic. The most convinced rationalist is in
its presence suddenly stricken with a strange and ancient vision, sees
the immense sceptical cosmogonies of this age as dreams going the way of
a thousand forgotten heresies, and believes for a moment that the dark
sayings handed down through eighteen centuries may, indeed, contain in
themselves the revolutions of which we have only begun to dream.
This value which we have above suggested unquestionably belongs to the
Tolstoians, who may roughly be described as the new Quakers. With their
strange optimism, and their almost appalling logical courage, they offer
a tribute to Christianity which no orthodoxies could offer. It cannot
but be remarkable to watch a revolution in which both the rulers and the
rebels march under the same symbol.
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