St. J. This:-- That Christianity is the foe of life, Of health, of wealth, of intellect and strength; The friend of all the feeble, the diseased, The low, the loathsome, the depraved, the dirt, The offal of mankind. Instinctively the strong Laid hands upon it and wove imperial power Out of its filthy rags: a purple star Of high unchristian sovereignty in Rome; In England here an aristocracy Of brains and culture. Long they kept in check, The churchdoms did, with Hell and Heaven for sword And buckler, and a sense of sin to salt The wounds they dealt--how long they kept in check Dynamic pressure of the Christian lie That men are equal in the sight of God! Sir T. Men are not equal, and there is no God. St. J. They are not equal, and there is no God. And when the myth of Heaven-and-Hell--the valves Wherein the world lay like an oyster pearled With the soul of man: when this great fable gaped And fell away, the lethal meaning, hid In Christian tenets, like a serpent brood Uncoiled, as rancour, decadence, despair, In revolutions, anarchies, nihilisms, A will to end the world. There stand we now, Naked against the Universe. Sir T. The truth About the lie! The double carapace Of Heaven-and-Hell sloughed off, mankind remains A houseless mollusc. St. J. Pitiful to see! Imagination--let me use that word Instead of soul; and let it mean entire The powers of blood and nerve, of heart and brain, And aught occult and undiscovered yet In carnate matter: Imagination, not Conceiving what has happened in the world, Much wonders at the darkness and the cold. How simple, how appalling, how secure Were Heaven and Hell; what fathomless content In that deep home of penitential fire, That everlasting, joyful holiday In golden streets lit by the glory of God! Sir T. Will the great heart of the world be great enough To bid that dream avaunt once and for ever? St. J. It will, it must, though it should come with wars, Convulsions, burnings, tortures, massacres, With centuries of woe employing all Prodigious powers of slaughter, powers of pain, Wherein our civilized self-consciousness Outdoes barbarity and instinct far Beyond comparisons of Heaven and Hell. Sir T. With wars, with woes? You think the change will be A long elaborate travail? St. J. I cannot tell. Sir T. But God and Sin and Heaven and Hell that _are_ not Are yet the very texture of the world. St. J. Kings, magistracies, warriors, learning, love Being knit in Heaven and Hell, in God and Sin, Like blood, nerve, sinew, bone in living flesh, It may be that the change will come about As human bodies alter in seven years time---- Sir T. In seven years' time!