260 Evolution and Social Reform : 



his creed." "Calumny," says Lecky, "is the homage 

 which dogmatism has ever paid to conscience. Even in the 

 periods Avhen the guilt of heresy was universally believed, 

 the spirit of intolerance was only sustained by the diffusion 

 of countless libels against the misbeliever, and by conceal- 

 ment of his virtues." The heretical or sacramentally de- 

 linquent dog must have a bad name fastened on him before 

 he could be hung or burned or drawn and quartered with 

 an entirely satisfied and quiet mind. 



But the dis-service done by theological morality has not 

 been by any means exhausted by its attendant persecutions. 

 These have somehow been the nursing-mothers of political 

 independence and industrial success. The blood of the 

 martyrs has not been so obviously the seed of the church 

 as it has been the seed of enterprise and wealth in soil that 

 she has drenched with blood. Witness to this the fortunes 

 of the Jews ; of the Dutch who, having taken Holland from 

 the sea, took her again from Philip's more rapacious clutch ; 

 of the Huguenots who in the crypt of Canterbury Cathe- 

 dral, where their descendants still have the right of 

 worship, set up their looms and made a brave beginning of 

 England's wonderful and magnificent industrial life. No, 

 the grand dis-service of the theological method in morality 

 has been the absorption in the imaginary service of God of 

 energies that would have planted the standard of humanity 

 some furlongs further into chaos. The survival still 

 survives, but in our day is less a good deal than archangel 

 ruined with the excess of glory obscured. 



One item of the schedule of particular things assigned 

 to me for measurement and weight is " Xineteeu Hundred 

 Years of Christianity," and you are now requested to 

 compose yourselves to a history of this succession. I 

 hasten to arrest the stampede which I perceive is imminent, 

 by assuring you that I shall not take up each separate 

 year, but give you an abstract and brief chronicle, and this 

 almost entirely with reference to that aspect of society (the 

 industrial aspect) to which those who follow me in this 

 course of le(;tures will confine themselves. When Dr. F. 

 E. Abbot suggested, some twenty years ago, tliat Chris- 

 tianity is a failure, tlu^ courteous retort was at once made 

 upon him, "It lias never been tried." And this is true if 

 by Christianity we are to understand the social doctrine of 

 tiie !New Testament. At least its trial, as reported in the 



