"You can't wonder if I am a little afraid," Claude said presently. "There has been some hard hitting from your pulpit within the last year." "You have heard my moralities--I won't call them sermons?" "Yes, I have heard; but I doubt if I have enjoyed your diatribes as much as the other sinners, especially the women of your flock. They love to be told they are a shade worse than Semiramis, if you will only imply that they are as fascinating as Cleopatra." "Poor worms," said the priest with a long-drawn sigh. "They are such very poor creatures. Even their sins are petty." "Would you prefer them if they were poisoners, like the Borgia?" "No; but I might despise them less. And I should have more hope of their repentance. These creatures don't know they are sinners. They gamble, they squander their husbands' fortunes, shipwreck their sons' inheritance; and when the domestic ship goes down they are injured innocents, surprised to find that 'things are so expensive.' I have talked with them--not in the confessional--and I have sounded the shallows of their silly minds--there are no depths, unless it were a depth of self-love. They come to Mass, and sit fanning themselves and sniffing eau-de-Cologne, while I expostulate with them and try to turn their thoughts into new channels. And then they get tired of the creed in which they were brought up; tired of hearing hard things, and of tasting wormwood instead of honey." "Is modern London so like Babylon?" "I doubt if the city with a hundred gates was much worse. And your substitutes for the Church you have deserted--your Christian Science, Pragmatism, Humanism, your letters from the dead, your philanthropy--expressed in oranges and buns for workhouse children, and in fashionable bazaars; charities that overlap each other and pauperise more than they relieve; and all for want of that one tremendous Central Power that could harmonise every effort, bring every man and woman's work into line and rule. In the history of God's chosen people, the one unpardonable sin was the worship of strange gods. Their Creator knew that religion was the only basis of conduct, and that the worshippers of evil gods must themselves become infamous. But this is the age of strange gods. You all have your groves and high places, your Baal and Astarte, your Kali or your Siva, your shrines upon mountain tops and under green trees, your Buddha, your Nietzsche, your Spinoza, your Comte. You run after the teachers of fantastic things, the high priests of materialism. You worship anywhere but in your church; you believe anything but the faith of your forefathers."