240 hlUMAJNIbM xni 



be acted on as such. On the contrary, it is just because 

 the religious doctrines of immortality are not taken as 

 facts that they are accepted. For we are accustomed to 

 accept matters of faith only at a large discount from their 

 face value, and their acceptance scarcely affects the value 

 of the hard-money facts of everyday life. Hence the 

 religious doctrines with respect to the future life form a 

 sort of paper currency, inconvertible with fact, which suits 

 people and circulates the better because of its very badness. 

 Their function is to conjure up pleasing and consoling 

 visions whenever we are in a mood for them, to provide a 

 brighter background for life than sheer extinction ; but they 

 are never allowed to grow insistent enough seriously to 

 affect action. They are entertained in a complacent spirit 

 of half belief, but no sensible man (and the mass of man 

 kind are always appallingly sensible with respect to what 

 does not tempt them !) allows himself to be distracted in 

 his business and upset in his calculations by such shadowy 

 possibilities. Consequently their practical effect is small 

 and utterly out of proportion to their pretensions. The 

 human spirit accepts them indeed in a religious I had 

 almost said a Pickwickian sense and uses whatever 

 elements in them minister to its needs : it rejects the 

 indigestible remainder. 



And here I cannot help thinking the churches make a 

 grave mistake. They do not seem to realise that the 

 cultivated minds of the present day have come to include 

 in the indigestible remainder the greater part of what 

 has hitherto been regarded as most distinctive dogma. 

 Fortunately or unfortunately, neither Heaven nor Hell 

 retains its efficacy, even for the purposes above described. 

 Men no longer dream themselves in Heaven nor dread 

 themselves in Hell. This puts the churches into the 

 humiliating position of offering men the reward of a 

 heaven which hardly any one desires, and of threatening 

 them with the penalties of a hell which every one believes 

 to be reserved for people a great deal worse than them 

 selves. Mr. Myers s churchwarden, who has already been 

 quoted, may have reached an unsurpassable pinnacle of 



