blonde.  Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre.  Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad—­in various ways.  I tested this idea by asking myself whether there was about any of the accusers anything morbid that might explain the accusation.  I was startled to find that this key fitted a lock.  For instance, it was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp.  But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp.  The modern man thought Becket’s robes too rich and his meals too poor.  But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes.  The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy.  The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrees.  The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers.  And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe.  If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread and wine.

I went over all the cases, and I found the key fitted so far.  The fact that Swinburne was irritated at the unhappiness of Christians and yet more irritated at their happiness was easily explained.  It was no longer a complication of diseases in Christianity, but a complication of diseases in Swinburne.  The restraints of Christians saddened him simply because he was more hedonist than a healthy man should be.  The faith of Christians angered him because he was more pessimist than a healthy man should be.  In the same way the Malthusians by instinct attacked Christianity; not because there is anything especially anti-Malthusian about Christianity, but because there is something a little anti-human about Malthusianism.

Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that Christianity was merely sensible and stood in the middle.  There was really an element in it of emphasis and even frenzy which had justified the secularists in their superficial criticism.  It might be wise, I began more and more to think that it was wise, but it was not merely worldly wise; it was not merely temperate and respectable.  Its fierce crusaders and meek saints might balance each other; still, the crusaders were very fierce and the saints were very meek, meek beyond all decency.  Now, it was just at this point of the speculation that I remembered my thoughts about the martyr and the suicide.  In that matter there had been this combination between two almost insane positions which yet somehow amounted to sanity.  This was just such another contradiction; and this I had already