THEOPHOBIA: ITS CAUSE 27 



examine the matter a little more closely. Why 

 should persons even if ignorant have the bias 

 which some obviously present against the idea of 

 a God ? Why should they wish to think that 

 there is no such Being, no future existence, 

 nothing higher than Nature ? Some persons 

 maintain that precedent to a denial of God there 

 must be a moral failure. That I am sure is quite 

 wrong. I should be far from saying that in some 

 materialists there is not a considerable weakening 

 of moral fibre, or perhaps it would be better put, 

 a distortion of moral vision, as evidenced by many 

 of the statements and proposals of eugenists, for 

 example, and by the political nostrums of some 

 who wrest science to a purpose for which it was 

 not intended. This no doubt is true, but it is 

 not quite the argument with which I am now 

 dealing, and that argument, if it implies moral 

 failure in the persons concerned, has little if any 

 genuine foundation in fact. Mr. Devas, in that 

 very remarkable book, The Key to the World's 

 Progress, gives us the useful phrase " post- 

 Christians." These people are really pagans 

 living in the Christian era, retaining many of the 

 excellent qualities which they owe neither to 

 Nature nor to paganism, but to the inheritance 

 perhaps involuntary and unrecognised of the 

 influences of Christianity. Many of these people 

 are kind, benevolent, scrupulously moral. They 

 have not learned to be such from Nature, for 

 Nature teaches no such lessons. Nor have they 

 learnt them from paganism, for these are not pagan 

 virtues. They are an inheritance from Chris- 



