“Your schools are conducted on a wrong principle, as are so many of your homes. Your punishments are not strong enough, your prisons are too full. But if I talk thus I will help to drive the cloud away, which will almost make of me a traitor.” “Not it,” cried Philemon, laughing. “You put it there between you, but it sticks by the law of gravity, which has not yet learned to smile without becoming irreverent.” “I suppose then you would teach pure morality and leave out religion,” I said. “It would be best,” Philemon declared. “Ssh! Ssh! Don’t rouse the clergy,” Vestasian exclaimed. “Why not? I could say the project came from hell.” “Certainly.” * * * * * _Passage omitted_ * * * * * “You see,” said Philemon, after a pause, “faith springs from true morality, but it does not spring up with it. If a man is moral simply because he is religious he is but a weakling, needing a crutch to lean against. He should be moral out of respect for his brother man, a pure feeling to lead a clean life, because it is right, without hope of reward or glamour of future glorification. And as long as the Church tries to force the two into the same channel it is but a failure, whatever it may appear on the outside.” “Well, of course,” affirmed Vestasian, indulgently. “But what can you expect on the earth? They muddle things so. For one thing, they are always trying to confound flesh and the spirit, pretty much as they confound their religion and morality. But flesh is flesh, and spirit will be spirit, if they howl and pray over it from now till Domesday. What could be more amusing than to listen to the man who says grace at meal-times? He returns thanks to my side of the Godhead for giving him the fruits of our little serfdom, earth. He knows the world and all upon it belongs to us; the Bible tells him so if he will read it, and the Catechism too. But though he reads he’s stubborn and won’t understand. He returns thanks for his food, whereas we don’t care a jot whether its well cooked or ill. Now, if he would simply take it with contentment and enjoyment, and be ready for poorer fare next day if it came his way, he’d show some sense. And if by saying grace he thinks he pleases such as Virginius and the rest, how far from the mark is he! They are as callous about his appetite as we ourselves, and only drop an unavailing tear when he eats or drinks too much. “Then again there is the marriage service, and the baptismal service, and all the rest, except the burial service. Forever trying to put the spirit first and the flesh second, and gradually to draw a pretty tight slip o’er them both, with spirit uppermost so that the flesh is comfortably hidden underneath. All this for respectability, which is the devil’s sham ermine cloak, as civilisation is his sham gold crown.”