Spiritual Evolution of Society 171 



fine and pure and glittering gold. Having this, a man 

 will be in the state of bliss in the midst of all manner of 

 external and bodily miseries ; without it he will be an 

 unhappy wretch, though he possess a wilderness of 

 motor-cars, a covey of aeroplanes, and a house in Park 

 Lane. The body of man can never be well off unless his 

 spirit is engaged in the contemplation of the mysteries 

 and the beauties of the Universe ; unless he knows 

 something of the Bread of Heaven and the wine of 

 angels, his cottage loaf will be as ashes in his mouth, 

 and his beer will be a sour drench. . . . Man, by his 

 very constitution, is not made to do mechanical work ; 

 and the doing of it makes him wretched ; and for the 

 evil I can see no cure. 



" Secondly, in the sixteenth century England under- 

 went a process which is called the Reformation — in 

 my opinion the most frightful disaster that ever over- 

 took the race of man. Frightful because its whole work 

 and tendency were to deny the mysteries, to take the 

 logical understanding out of its place and set it on the 

 throne of the imaginative faculty, to deprive the spirit 

 of the Bread of Heaven and the wine of angels, which 

 are the true meat and drink of us, without which we 

 perish." We do not apologise for this lengthy quotation, 

 because Mr. Machen here and there does show some 

 glimmering of the truth, the points are well put, and the 

 diction is of a high order ; but the perversion of ideas on 

 the part of this man of strong literary faculty, through 

 the unscientific study of history and humanity, calls 

 for examination. As we previously remarked, what is 

 the good of talking of the faculty of the imagination, 

 the true stone of the philosophers, to men who are 

 actually suffering physical and mental pain through 

 no fault of their own, as the result of a bad social 

 system ? Is it not absurd to talk in this way to men 

 who have been brought up in a miserable environment 



