I wish I might let this eloquent passage stand without comment. Taken by itself, it sounds almost like the words of a sincere believer in Christ as the supernatural Savior of Men. But, taken in connection with what has gone before, it seems to me abominable. Here is a man who has denied the supernatural nature of Christ time after time in the preceding 300 pages. And now he is using words which imply such a miraculous nature, or else mean nothing at all. Yes, they mean something. They mean that this light, this balm, this peace, this salvation which is Christianity’s highest virtue, is an illusion. To every man this Christianity has said: Jesus died for you! Here the doctrine of the Vicarious Atonement is indicated. And St. Paul, in preaching that doctrine, that “religion about Jesus,” founded a new faith and made Christ the mere foundling of Christianity! True, Browne has also said a great deal on the other side. That is precisely the trouble. He thinks it is possible to stand both with the sheep and with the goats. But the final chapter of “This Believing World” (for Christianity is not its climax) is consistent. It is entitled, “What Happened in Arabia.” And it thus concludes: “Islam ... has been one of the most effective civilizing forces in the history of Africa and Asia, and in a measure also in that of Europe.... The supreme gift of Islam was the idea of unity which it somehow drilled into the heads of a hundred races--not merely the unity of God, but even more the unity of mankind.... Every other great religion taught more or less the same doctrine [in regard to submitting to Allah], but none with such fierceness and unrestraint.... Islam excluded no man from the army of Allah.... And that is why to this day Islam can still win converts with twice the ease of any other religion. That is why to this day Islam is one of the mightiest institutions on earth for the ordering and beautifying of life in at least the ‘backward’ lands.” In the beginning there was fear. In the end there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet! 5. THE STORIES OF DURANT It is with regret that I include Will Durant among the Misbehaviorists. He is no crude mechanist, and his popularity is so great that, like Sinclair Lewis, he has almost ceased to be a mere individual and become an institution. And in some respects his success is a most gratifying and hopeful sign of the times. [Illustration: DR. WILL DURANT Almost an institution] Some say that it was Durant who showed us that we were fond of serious reading and not of the light novels which the publishers for so many years fancied that we craved. But in reality it was “The Education of Henry Adams” which showed us that. And I am not so certain that a mere love of heavy reading is such a good sign. By the time reading becomes substantial it begins to make some difference what it is weighted with.