“Because we have much to fear from him.” He got up and stood with his back to the fire. “When men believe in nothing, they rot. If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that. The world has had its greatest moments at the times of its greatest faith. Then when belief goes, the decline begins. But first these people who believe in nothing set up idols of their own making. They call them by fine names—liberty, perhaps, or communism, or the freedom of the proletariat, or the gospel of anarchy, or mob rule. But they very soon tire of worshiping even them. Then fear enters their hearts. They believe in no hereafter and no god. They see that life here is short and uncertain. They see that there are good things in the world—fine food, fine clothes, money, power. They want the cash. The credit can go. The people who lay up treasures in heaven are fools. Well then, let them lay up their treasures in heaven—and let them go after them. They themselves mean to have what they can see, feel, touch, smell. They begin trampling, stampeding, cursing. Get, get, get, they cry. What do they attack first? The churches. Away with restraint, away with rules, away with sickly faith. They want more concrete things and they mean to get them. Then blood incites them further. They kill and kill and kill. Killing and grabbing—they are occupied with nothing else. Some for the sake of appearances or because they like the sound of words go about shouting their phrases. But sooner or later they turn on each other; or their followers, sick of blood, turn upon them. And then, when there is a little peace, faith creeps back into people’s hearts again, and a belief in God. And they wonder how the madness came, and they try to wipe out the blood stains and live sanely again. And they go back to work in the fields and stop hating each other. Perhaps they have learned something. Not always. But they have got tolerance again, and a belief. And with those two things they can begin once more. To believe in something beyond this world, to have faith in the destiny of the soul … that’s everything.”
He looked at her, suddenly abashed.
“I’ve been talking to you,” he said, “as if I were addressing a meeting. I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve liked it. Go on. So your book shows——”
“Shows that any faith is good. Shows that all beliefs are so intermingled that they are almost inextricable. It shows that what matters is their common foundation—the belief in a Divine Creator. Without these various revelations that are the foundations of religion, the world would have been chaos. Destroy them, and the world will be chaos. Christianity is the light on the path of the Western world. Other worlds, other lights. But to say that we can walk without light, or to shut our eyes and say there is no light—that is the great insanity, the great evil.”
“Yes, I think that’s true,” she agreed.
“I’m not a religious fellow, in the ordinary sense of the word,” he explained, “and yet I’m more interested in religion than in any other subject. I do go to church, but more as a student than a worshiper. I like to think about the psychology of a congregation, and the possible—the probable benefits of worshiping all together in a building with four walls and a roof.”
It wasn’t so difficult, after all, to draw him out. She liked making him talk. And when she thought she had drawn him out enough she rang for tea.
“Of course this work of yours is tremendously interesting, but at the same time I feel more than ever that you need diversions. The dancing wasn’t altogether a success, I gathered.”
“No,” he agreed, smiling, ”I’m afraid it wasn’t. But when we were discussing hobbies the other day, I forgot to tell you that I had another, besides religions. And that’s the stage.”