"He: '"Steady, steady, my dear sir. I do not allude to that healing power at all. Again, placing myself on your standpoint, I will, for argument's sake, admit that the waters at Lourdes have no miraculous healing power owing to the influence of this saint or that. You might permit me to remark, nevertheless, that it is just as much of a miracle as when the drugs prescribed by our doctors happen to cure us. For, what could be more miraculous than that? But this is only by the way. I allude to quite another miracle, and I can only express my amazement that you do not guess it more quickly." "I: '"I am quite out of touch with miracles." "He: '"Bravo! This is precisely what the great Lessing used to say: the greatest of all miracles is the one that people do not notice as such at all. Just consider: do you not draw vast masses of people to your sermons? Have you not persuaded most of them that you have founded a new Religion? What on earth could be more miraculous than that! "'"In your sermons you dance on a thin rope of logic made out of the guts of a few anæmic cats dropped from the dissecting table of science. If therefore you had won a reputation as a rope-dancer, one could readily understand it. But you have won the reputation of a founder of a new religion, which is to a logical rope what catguts are to a great violinist. Is that not marvellous? Savonarola would have charged you, at best, with blacking his shoes, and yet people take you for a modern Savonarola. Is that not marvellous? Is it anything short of a miracle? Is not this the very miracle of Lourdes? Hundreds of thousands of intelligent Frenchmen believe in the healing power of water in consequence of its canonisation by a saint. Is this not a miracle in our time?" "I: '"If I am to be infinitely less worthy a man than Savonarola because I believe in the infinity and truth of Science, I gladly forego the honour. The more light we pour into the human heart, the nobler it will be." "He: '"So you believe that your hearers follow you on account of the light you give them? Pray, abandon any such idea forthwith. They cling to you because of your interesting personality, and because you give satisfaction to their vanity. In persuading them that the life-blood of the 'old' Religion is mere stale water, they congratulate themselves on their being intellectually superior to the orthodox believers. "'"Is there no one who has the courage to say aloud that the canker of all Religions in England is their constant toadying to Reason and Science? The theory of Evolution, first rightly condemned by the clergy, is now an established costume without which no bishop would dare to officiate in sermons or books. Naturalists all over the world lustily attack and combat Evolution; but no English clergyman ventures to doubt it. He will and must toady to what he thinks is 'Science.'