Collected Works (Vol. III)

ELEUSIS 223 and the mysterious glories of the holy Yi King itself! Civilisation, decadence, and the slime. Still the Great Wall keeps the Barbarians from China: it is the wall that the Church of Christ set up against science and philo- sophy, and even to-day its ruins stand, albeit wrapped in the lurid flames of Hell. It is the law of life, this cycle; decadence is perfection, and the perfect soul is assumed into the bosom of Nephthys, so that for a while the world lies fallow. It is in feiling to see this constant fume of incense rising from the earth that pessimistic philosophies make their grand fundamental error: in that, and in assuming the very point in dispute, the nature of the laws of other worlds and the prospects of the individual soul. Confess, O subtle author, that thou thyself art even now in the same trap! Willingly, reader; these slips happen when, although one cannot prove to others, one knows.! Thou too shalt know, an thou wilt :—ask how, and we come suddenly back to our subject, Just as a dreamer may wander through countless nightmares, to find himself in the end on the top of a precipice, whence falling, he shall find himself in bed. Hear wisdom! the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, A man is almost obliged to be in com- munion with God when God is blowing his hat off, drenching him to the skin, whistling through his very bones, scaring him almost to death with a flash of lightning, and so on. When he gets time to think, he thinks just that. In a church all is too clearly the work of man: in the matter of man’s comfort man’s devices are so obviously superior to God’s: so that we compare hats and languidly discuss the preacher. Religion is alive in Wales, because people have to walk miles to chapel. 1 Tet me run wild for once, I beg; I am tired of emulating Mr. Storer Clouston’'s Sir Julian Wallingford, ‘‘ whose reasoning powers were so remarkable that he never committed the slightest action without furnishing a full and adequate explanation of his conduct.’’—A. C. Religion is alive among Mohammedans, who pray (as they live) out of doors, and who will fight and die for their ideas; and among Hindus, whose bloody sacrifices bring them daily face to face with death, Pan-Islam is possible; pan-Germany is possible; but pan-Christendom would be absurd. There were saints in the times of the Crusades, and Crusaders in the times of the Saints: for though the foe was more artificial than real, and the object chimerical, a foe and an aim of whatever sort assist the concentration which alone is life. So that we need not be surprised to see as we do that religion is dead in London, where it demands no greater sacrifice than that of an hour’s leisure in the week, and even offers to repay that with social con- sideration for the old, and opportunities of flirtation for the young. The word ‘‘dear”? has two senses, and these two are one. Pressing the ‘‘ out-of-doors” argument, as we may call it, I will challenge each of my readers to a simple experiment. Go out one night toa distant and lonely heath, if no mountain summit is available: then at midnight repeat the Lord’s Prayer, or any invocation with which you happen to be familiar, or one made up by yourself, Or one consisting wholly of senseless and barbarous words.! Repeat it solemnly and 1 Tam ashamed to say that I have devoted considerable time to the absurd task of finding meanings for, and tracing the corruptions of, the ‘‘ barbarous names of evocation” which occur in nearly all conjurations, and which Zoroaster warns his pupils not to change, be- cause ‘‘they are names divine, having in the sacred rites a power ineffable.’ The fact is that many such names are indeed corruptions of divine names. We may trace Eheieh in Eie, Abraxas in Abrae, Tetragram- maton in Jehovah. But this, an initiate knows, is quite contrary to the true theory. It is because the names are senseless that they are effective. If a man is really praying he cannot bring himself to utter ridiculous things to his God, just as Mark Twain observes that one ‘‘cannot pray alie.” Sothat it isa sublime