“To think of the great Founder of a great Creed, and then to consider what his pretended followers have made of Him and His teaching, is sufficient to fill the soul with the sickness of despair and humiliation! To remember that Christ came to teach all men the Gospel of love,--and to find them after eighteen hundred years still preferring the Gospel of hate,--is enough to make one doubt the truth of religion altogether! The Divine Socialist preached a creed too good and pure for this world; and when we try to follow it, we are beaten back on all sides by the false conventionalities and customs of a sacerdotal system grown old in self-seeking, not in self-sacrifice. Were Christ to come again, the first thing He would probably do would be to destroy all the churches, saying: ‘I never knew you: depart from me ye that work iniquity!’ But till He does come again, it rests with the thinkers of the time to protest against wrongs and abuses, even if they cannot destroy them,--to expose falsehood, even if they cannot utterly undo its vicious work. Seeing, however, that the greater majority of men are banded on the side of wealth and material self-interest, it is unfortunately only a few who remain to work for the cause of the poor, and for such equal rights of justice as you--as we--in our present Association claim to be most worthy of man’s best efforts. It may be asked by those outside such a Fraternity as ours,--‘What do they want? What would they have that they cannot obtain?’ I would answer that we want to see the end of a political system full of bribery and corruption,--that we desire the disgrace and exposure of such men as those, who, under the pretence of serving the country, merely line their own coffers out of the taxes they inflict upon the people;--and that if we see a king inclined to favour the overbearing dominance of a political party governed by financial considerations alone,--a party which has no consideration for the wider needs of the whole nation, we from our very hearts and souls desire the downfall of that king!” A low, deep murmur responded to his words,--a sound like the snarl of wolves, deep, fierce, and passionate. A close observer might perhaps have detected a sudden pallor on Leroy’s face as he heard this ominous growl, and an involuntary clenching of the hand on the part of Axel Regor. Max Graub looked up. “Ah so, my friends! You hate the King?” No answer was vouchsafed to this query. The interruption was evidently unwelcome, all eyes being still fixed on Leroy. He went on tranquilly: