Autumn Sights and Musings 201 



There is impatience with forms that do not 

 dress a substance. With the Chadbands 

 and Pecksniffs these are heavy times. A 

 drunken priest is unfrocked as smartly as 

 a pickpocket is clapped into jail. Faith 

 without works is dead. 



Yet the religious spirit is wider abroad 

 in this day than ever before. We do not 

 ask how much belief a man may have, nor 

 how far he endorses such and such a read- 

 ing of such and such a text, because we 

 heartily do not care. But we do hope that 

 he is honest in his business, good to his 

 family, votes for the public welfare, and 

 does not stagnate mentally. We try him 

 by practical tests. We praise his charity, 

 unless he gives to beggars, when we con- 

 demn him for his weakness and want of 

 sense in encouraging pauperism. We love 

 him for his kindness, unless he is better to 

 the erring than to the steadfast, when we 

 deplore a sentimental weakness in his char- 

 acter. But we cease to ask how he trans- 

 lates wvro<r, or if he remembers the Thirty- 

 nine Articles, or the Nicene Creed. He 

 may take the story of Adam in Eden as 



