574 APPENDIX TO PART III

and power which might have hallowed that name, and taught it to all the world. And there he would see the abomination of the Papacy standing in the holy place, and Christ forgotten as soon as named in a Woman-worship more gross than ever Ephesus gave Diana; and the dull monk fretting away his life in uselessness, and the subtle priest selling souls for money; and the fields trodden down by armies, and the cities sunk in dissipation and distress, and the bold Atheist lifting his head as the only Honest man among them all. And this the state of Christendom, after eighteen centuries of Christianity!

§ 4. But he would see stranger things yet.

He would look to our own Island, knowing that there at least the pure word of God was preached. He would see a race of men gifted by God’s kindness with intense energy and clear intelligence-with every earthly means of doing good at their disposal. Peace-freedom-knowledge-wealth-and guarded by God’s Providence, by a series of all but miraculous interpositions, from every form of danger-and every effort of hostility-and perhaps the Angel would be surprised to find that the idea of religious motives or of Christian charities, as in any wise connected with or influencing political acts, would be scouted as the last fanaticism in the Parliament of this favoured nation; perhaps also he would be surprised to find that for two years back the only mode in which we had exercised influence on foreign nations had been stealthily to stir up strife, and clumsily to encourage rebellion.¹ But if he passed by all this, if he looked disdainfully past Parliaments and policies, as the World’s business more than his, and turned to the flock of Christ’s faithful people, there, assuredly, strangest of all that he had witnessed, would be to him-angry words of God’s ministers one to the other-paralysed efforts of Christian teachers one by the other-contending congregations, obstinate about forms of words and films of opinion, and God’s servants giving themselves leisure to dispute about times and methods of conversion, while the whole earth is still lying in wickedness. Imagine the firemen at the great Fire of London stopping from their work at the engines to dispute about the way in which water put out fire. Fancy them getting irritated respecting the Equivalents of Hydrogen and Oxygen in the elements, and finally fighting across the leathern pipes until one half of them were disabled: a stranger sight than this it must be to the Angels of God to see the Christians of Great Britain quarrel about Baptismal Regeneration, while half the world is unbaptized, and the other half blaspheming Christ.

§ 5. Nor less strange to hear them say, meanwhile, that this fire is of God’s kindling and this evil on the Earth is His sending. Yes; it is His sending-but it is your fault. It must needs be that the offence come-woe to you by whom it comes;² and all this misery has come by you Christians. You, polite and gentle ministers, who trip mincingly up pulpit stairs, and read fair sermons out of fair black books on fair velvet cushions; you, hot Presbyterians, who will not let a plain man pray a good prayer

¹ [This remark, again, helps to fix the date of the Essay (compare p. lxxvi., above); the reference obviously being to what Palmerston described as his attitude of “judicious bottle-holding” towards the insurrectionary movements in Europe which followed the Revolution of 1848.]

² [Luke xvii. 1.]

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