Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/46

 roaring, rushing crowd—the broad deep river of suffering, working, loving, struggling humanity, sweeping on, despite itself, to the limitless sea of Death,—every unit in the mass craving for sympathy, praying for guidance, longing for comfort, trying to discover ways out of pain and grief, and hoping to find God somehow and somewhere—and naught but "fairy lamps"—twinkling doubtfully, making the gloom more visible, the uncertainty of the gathering shadows more confusing and misleading!—"fairy lamps" of which the "Church of the Laodiceans," so strongly reproved by the "Spirit" in the Revelation of St. John the Divine, must have been the originator and precursor—"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth!"

It is perhaps to be doubted whether any Churchman, no matter how distinguished, learned, fashionable or popular, has the right to call London or any city which is under the Christian dispensation "pagan." No one man can honestly say he has probed the heart of another,—and if this be true, as it undoubtedly is, still less can one man assume to judge the faith or the emotions of six million hearts—six million striving, working and struggling souls. That even a handful of the six million should still wander towards "fairy lamp" Churches, in the hope to find warmth and luminance for their poor lives in such flickering and easily quenched sparks of life, speaks volumes for the touching faith, the craving hope, the desire of ultimate good, which animates our "pagan" citizens. For, if after two thousand years of Christianity, some of them are