Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/29

 pride, licentiousness, and wealth-worship of man, I cannot but think the days are drawing near when our Master will demand of us account of our service. It is just the same as in the case of the individual wrong-doer; when it seems as if punishment were again and again retarded, and mercy shown,—yet if all benefits, blessings, and warnings are unheeded, then at last the bolt falls suddenly and with terrific effect. So with nations—so with churches—so with the world!"

Marie Corelli is bold; perhaps she is the boldest writer that has ever lived. What she believes she says, with a brilliant fearlessness that sweeps aside petty argument in its giant's stride towards the goal for which she aims. She will have no half-measures. Her works, gathered together under one vast cover, might fitly be printed and published as an amplified edition of the Decalogue.

It is small wonder, then, that she has not earned the approbation of those critics who are unable to grasp the stupendous nature of her programme; they, having always held by certain canons, and finding those canons brusquely disregarded, retort with wholesale condemnation of matters that they deem literary heterodoxy, but whose sterling simplicity is in reality altogether beyond their ken. Fortunately, their words have failed to frighten off