henceforth, until, at last, we are altogether taken up into his being" (p. 68)--one does not quite see the reason for this long campaign against death. Surely the logical consummation would be an ultimate racial euthanasia, an absorption of humanity into God, a vast apotheosis-nirvana, after which the earth and sun could go on cooling at their leisure. * * * * * Apart from one or two irrepressible "asides," I have attempted in this chapter to let Mr. Wells speak for himself, proclaim the faith that is in him, and draw the portrait of his God. Many details are of course omitted, for which the reader must turn to the original text. He will find it a pleasant and profitable task. The remainder of my present undertaking falls into three parts. First I must ask the reader to consider with me whether Mr. Wells's gospel can be accepted as a real addition to knowledge, like (say) the discovery of radium, or whether it is only a re-description in new language (or old language slightly refurbished) of familiar facts of spiritual experience. In the second place, assuming that we have to fall back on the latter alternative, we shall enquire whether anything would be gained by the general acceptance of this new-old, highly emotionalized terminology. Thirdly, I shall venture to suggest that when Mr. Wells says "The first purpose of God is the attainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a means to more knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power," he is only choosing a mythological way of expressing the fact that if God (in the ordinary, non-Wellsian sense of the word) is ever to be found, it must be through patient investigation of the phenomena in which he clothes himself. V WHEN IS A GOD NOT A GOD?