heroes, some stories of fairies, ghosts, or demons, and a mass of quaint superstitions, genial or frightening.  The modern town-dweller has no God and no Devil; he lives without awe, without admiration, without fear.  Whatever we may think about these beliefs, it is not natural for men and women to be without them.  The life of the town artisan who works in a factory is a life to which the human organism has not adapted itself; it is an unwholesome and unnatural condition.  Hence, probably, comes the malaise which makes him think that any radical change must be for the better.

Whatever the cause of the disease may be (and I do not pretend that the conditions of urban life are an adequate explanation) the malady is there, and will probably prove fatal to our civilisation.  I have given my views on this subject in the essay called The Future of the English Race. And yet there is a remedy within the reach of all if we would only try it.

The essence of the Christian revelation is the proclamation of a standard of absolute values, which contradicts at every point the estimates of good and evil current in ‘the world.’  It is not necessary, in such an essay as this, to write out the Beatitudes, or the very numerous passages in the Gospels and Epistles in which the same lessons are enforced.  It is not necessary to remind the reader that in Christianity all the paraphernalia of life are valued very lightly; that all the good and all the evil which exalt or defile a man have their seat within him, in his own character; that we are sent into the world to suffer and to conquer suffering; that it is more blessed to give than to receive; that love is the great revealer of the mysteries of life; that we have here no continuing city, and must therefore set our affections and lay up our treasures in heaven; that the things that are seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal.  This is the Christian religion.  It is a form of idealism; and idealism means a belief in absolute or spiritual values.

When applied to human life, it introduces, as it were, a new currency, which demonetises the old; or gives us a new scale of prices, in which the cheapest things are the dearest, and the dearest the cheapest.  The world’s standards are quantitative; those of Christianity are qualitative.  And being qualitative, spiritual goods are unlimited in amount; they are increased by being shared; and we rob nobody by taking them.

Secularists ask impatiently what Christianity has done or proposes to do to make mankind happier, by which they mean more comfortable.  The answer is (to put it in a form intelligible to the questioner) that Christianity increases the wealth of the world by creating new values.  Wealth depends on human valuation.  For example, if women were sufficiently well educated not to care about diamonds, the Kimberley mines would pay no dividends, and the rents in Park Lane would go down.  The prices of paintings by