of his, formerly an ardent secularist lecturer, and now no less zealous as a propagandist in the Socialist movement.
'What are your present-day opinions about religion?' he asked abruptly.
I replied that I was still, so far as I knew, an agnostic; but that I was not so sure now as I used to be that agnosticism or materialism was the last word on the subject.
'Perhaps,' he said, 'I am much in the same position; but I have never allowed myself to worry about these questions since I was at Oxford thinking of becoming a parson. Don't you think I should have made a capital bishop?—I should like to have swaggered about in full canonicals anyway, but not in shovel hat, apron and gaiters—Oh my! But so far as I can discover from logical thinking, I am what is called bluntly an Atheist. I cannot see any real evidence of the existence of God or of immortality in the facts of the world—amazing as is the whole phenomenon of the universe. And of this I am absolutely convinced—that if there is a God, He never meant us to know much about Himself, or indeed to concern ourselves about Him at all. Had He so wished, don't you think He would have made His existence and wishes so overwhelmingly clear to us that we could not possibly have ever doubted about it at all?
'But Atheist though I must consider myself when I reason about the matter, my Atheism has as little effect upon my ordinary conduct and work-a-day views of things, as belief in Christ appears to have on the majority of Christians. So far as I commonly think and act, I do so precisely as do most other fairly sensible folk—that is to say, I think and act in accordance with the thoughts, traditions, and habits of my day and generation. Commonly, in all that concerns my thought and work, I think of God and Christ, Angels and Saints, just as do devout churchmen, and so also in a way when I think about Greek and Scandinavian mythology, I do so doubtless as the Greeks and Norsemen did. The Gods are all as real to my imagination as are historical and
