The Son of God goes forth to war,
  A kingly crown to gain: 

  His blood-red banner streams afar: 
  Who follows in His train?

This carpenter’s son was one of the most unpretentious men on earth; utterly simple and honest—­he would not even let anyone praise him.  When some one called him “good Master,” he answered, quickly, “Why callest thou me good?  There is none good save one, that is, God.”  But this simplicity has been taken with deprecation by his church, which persists in heaping compliments upon him in conventional, courtly style: 

  The company of angels
    Are praising Thee on high;
  And mortal men, and all things
    Created, make reply: 
  All Glory, laud and honour,
  To Thee, Redeemer, King....

The impression a modern man gets from all this is the unutterable boredom that Heaven must be.  Can one imagine a more painful occupation than that of the saints—­casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea—­unless it be that of the Triumvirate itself, compelled to sit through eternity watching these saints, and listening to their mawkish and superfluous compliments!

But one can understand that such things are necessary in a monarchy; they are necessary if you are going to have Good Society, and a Good Society church.  For Good Society is precisely the same thing as Heaven; that is, a place to which only a few can get admission, and those few are bored.  They spend their time going through costly formalities—­not because they enjoy it, but because of its effect upon the populace, which reads about them and sees their pictures in the papers, and now and then is allowed to catch a glimpse of their physical Presences, as at the horse-show, or the opera, or the coaching-parade.

#Horn-blowing#

I know the Church of Good Society in America, having studied it from the inside.  I was an extraordinarily devout little boy; one of my earliest recollections—­I cannot have been more than four years of age—­is of carrying a dust-brush about the house as the choir-boy carried the golden cross every Sunday morning.  I remember asking if I might say the “Lord’s prayer” in this fascinating play; and my mother’s reply:  “If you say it reverently.”  When I was thirteen, I attended service, of my own volition and out of my own enthusiasm, every single day during the forty days of Lent; at the age of fifteen I was teaching Sunday-school.  It was the Church of the Holy Communion, at Sixth Avenue and Twentieth Street, New York; and those who know the city will understand that this is a peculiar location—­precisely half way between the homes of some of the oldest and most august of the city’s aristocracy, and some of the vilest and most filthy of the city’s slums.  The aristocracy were paying for the church, and occupied the best pews; they came, perfectly clad, aus dem Ei gegossen, as the Germans say, with the manner they so carefully cultivate, gracious, yet infinitely aloof.  The service was made for them—­as all the rest of the world is made for them; the populace was permitted to occupy a fringe of vacant seats.