Doubtless when he wrote "De Profundis" Oscar Wilde believed absolutely in his own attitude. He was no Lucifer in his own account, no fallen angel. He was only a spirit of light which had made a mistake and found itself in fetters. That is the tragedy of the book, that its author could never see himself as others saw him or realise that he had sinned. When Satan fell from Heaven, in Milton's mighty work, he made no attempt to persuade himself that he had found something hidden away within him like a treasure in a field--"Humility." There was in the imaginary portrait of the Author of Evil still an awful and impious defiance of the Forces that controlled all nature and him as a part of nature. Oscar Wilde could look back upon all he did to himself and all the incalculable evil he wrought upon others and say quite calmly that he did not regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. He tells us that he threw the "pearl of his soul into a cup of wine," that he "went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes." And then, after living on honeycomb he realises that to have continued living on honeycomb would have been wrong, because it would have arrested the continuance of his development. "I had to pass on." Let us pass on also to a consideration of Wilde's teaching on Christianity in "De Profundis." THE AUTHOR'S VIEW OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH It is necessary to deal with this part of "De Profundis" which treats of the unhappy author's "discoveries" in Christianity, because his views were put so perfectly, with such a wealth of phrase, with such apparent certainty of conviction, that they may well have an influence upon young and impressionable minds which will be, and possibly has been, dangerous and unsettling. There is no doubt but that the teaching of "De Profundis," or rather the point of view enunciated in it, which deals with Christianity, shows that Oscar Wilde had failed to gain any real insight into the Faith. It is quite true that various of the sects within the English Church, especially those which dissent from the Establishment, might find themselves in accordance with much that Wilde said. A Catholic, however, cannot for a moment admit that the poet's teachings are anything but paradoxical, dangerous, and untrue. A minister of the Protestant Church, Canon Beeching, preaching at Westminster Abbey on "The Sinlessness of Christ," referred to the portions of "De Profundis," with which I am dealing now, in no uncertain way. There are here and there things that a Catholic would not entirely endorse in Canon Beeching's sermon, yet, on the whole, it is a very sane and fair presentation of what a Christian must think in reading "De Profundis." It is as well to say frankly, that I write as a Catholic, and, in this section of my criticism, for those who are also of the Faith. I print some extracts from Canon Beeching's sermon: