"I do not know. Perhaps they cannot. We need our Philistine, the bogie-man with whom one frightens children. In France the churches were shut by the pagans when people ceased to attend Mass. Now they set up the Lord of Dung on the altar. Marat, in his time, was buried in the Pantheon; but when Christ reentered, Marat was thrown into the sewer. The last to obtain apotheosis in the Pantheon was an engineer, who had a single merit--that of being murdered by a friend of freedom. When we become Christians again, we shall receive back both the Holy Sepulchre and Santa Sophia. We do not need to take them. Such is the great function of the Philistines in the spiritual economy of nature." =World-Religion.=--The teacher continued: "Goethe wrote in his youth a treatise maintaining that the religion imposed by the State was the most favourable for the maintenance of the State." The pupil objected: "But how will it fare with the individual conscience?" "As it has done hitherto. The State determines the views of the individual in geometry, botany, history, and religion, by instruction in the schools, by religious services in the colleges, and prayers in camps and barracks." "But what about freedom of belief and thought?" "We have already agreed that there is no freedom, but that all is dependence and compulsion enforced by mutual pressure. Therefore misuse not the sacred name of freedom. During the course of my long life, I have often thought I could interpret the intention of Providence thus: If all religious forms fell off like husks, and only the kernels remained, they might grow together like botanical cells, and form a single plant--a world-tree, under whose shadow all nations might rest in devotion and in unity." The teacher continued: "I had also believed that I had noticed there is a special purpose in the intermingling of races which is now proceeding. This has already gone so far, that in my insignificant family, which is registered as Scandinavian, we find traces of all the five quarters of the world." "But do you really believe it?" "I do not know." "And do you think that all nations will be united in a common Christianity?" "I do not know! But the promise to Abraham, 'In thy seed shall all nations be blessed,' has already been fulfilled by Abraham's descendant, Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, Christian Europe and the western hemisphere of North and South America rule the world. And before the actual reality, our wishes, ideas, theories, and anticipations collapse." =The Return of Christ.=--The pupil asked: "Are we to expect the promised return of Christ?" "Christ Himself answered this importunate question of his disciples by saying, 'The Kingdom of God is among you.' And when He left them He said, 'Behold, I am with you always till the end of the world.'" "Good. But how is Christ's Kingdom to be set up on earth?"