272 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIENCE. 



such, is not at hand. It will not come during this gene- 

 ration, nor the next. It will not come quickly. The 

 miracle of a speedily regenerated society has been more 

 than once promised by sanguine prophets and social 

 reformers in these latter days, but the miracle has not 

 yet occurred, being, indeed, many times more difficult of 

 accomplishment than even the religious miracle of the 

 instantaneous and radical conversion of the single human 

 soul. It is very true that men are loth to abandon long- 

 cherished illusory hopes, and this dear delusion of a 

 happy society, this ever-vanishing vision of a " perfect 

 state " as possible with imperfect men, and about to conie, 

 is one of their oldest, most constantly recurrent, and still 

 passionately cherished delusions. It is the last delusive 

 hope which the toiling multitude, and many generous 

 spirits far wiser than they, the last which men generally, 

 ever hopeful though ever disappointed, are prepared tc* 

 give up. Yet the hope is no other than a delusion, and 

 it is the chief lesson of the new scientific faith, that none 

 such are good to entertain ; that to endeavour to find 

 and know the truth, the actual naked truth, will profit 

 far better ; that much of men's grief and misery on the 

 earth has been due to this old ostrich habit of trying to 

 fold themselves round with pleasing but treacherous 

 fictions, instead of knowing and facing actual bracing 

 facts ; for the fiction is invariably exploded in process of 

 time, and then men find they have been fed on bankrupt 

 promises, while they have been led disastrously away 

 from their true and right course, which had else been 

 made clear and acceptable to them. Fictions have their 

 place and function in the realms of poetry, but not in the 

 sphere of practice, where action must be taken. There 

 only the fact can profit us to go by; there failure to 

 apprehend rightly the actual facts and actual conditions 



