perpetuation of ancient creeds and doctrines devised by the savage bulls and frantic eunuchs of the church during the duskier ages of the world.
But if he looked to-day for the ardor of his first friends and for the childlike spirit which he declared was prerequisite for admission to his fellowship, one is rather at a loss to know where he would find it, unless, perchance, in the radiant face of some Salvation Army lass in the street, with the "bread of God" on her lips; or in the chant of some Negro woman, toiling all day over the tubs and singing with serene pathos:
He will tell us when the work is done.
In the lack of a lucid and completely intelligible explanation of his ability to make his lovers radiantly happy, the humbler laity and the learned theologians connected his power for centuries with interruptions of the order of nature and with certain business transactions in heaven. A few theologians still survive who attempt to account for magic by logic. And some simple folk still believe that the power of Jesus to confer a sense of abundant life and happiness is somehow dependent upon and knit up with his power to make wine out of well water.
But the plain people of my own acquaintance regard most of the Oriental interruptions of nature as puerile when compared with the wonders that any Occidental farmer can work when he gets into harmony with nature by the aid of half a dozen modern inventions. And so the once fiery miracle question is rather fading away. The theological questions, too.
