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 due course revert to progress again when the Soul is once more allowed to have its way. But Governments whose common law of procedure is to put this Soul or "spirit of the Ideal," in the background as a kind of myth or chimera, and who seek to settle everything pertaining to the interests of the people by what they term "practical" methods, (which often prove wholly unpractical,) are naturally prone to forget that whatever they do, whatever they say, the busy Soul of the Nation is altogether outside and above them, fighting for itself, often desperately and piteously, and struggling to make use of its wings and rise higher and ever higher despite its hobbles of iron and feet of clay. Religion is supposed to give it this, its demanded freedom of noble flight, and the Christian religion, above all religions in the world, with its consoling teaching that out of sorrow cometh joy, and out of Death is born Life, should make for the happiness and peace of every living creature. But when the very ministers of that glorious Faith cast doubt upon it, and live their own lives in direct opposition to it,—when undevout and therefore limited scientists dissect a midge of truth in order to launch a leviathan of fallacious theory,—when there is no pure and simple Church of Christ where all may meet in honest worship of His perfect Creed, but only a million Sects which blaspheme His Divine memory by their outrageous and petty quarrels one with the other,—it is no matter for surprise that a strong revulsion of feeling should set in, or that the Soul of the Nation, conceiving itself grievously wronged and neglected, should try to find some fresh path of its own heavenward,—*