We praise the sweetness of the healing waters of Christ-like charity, but despite our gospel he never gets it, never.

We give him execration, injustice; if we let him go with a word, it is never a gentle word, but a bitter epithet; and we wonder he is estranged, when he sees our amazing composure in an amazing welter of hypocrisy and deceit.

There is, of course, the better side, the many thousands of Catholics and Protestants who sincerely aim at better things.

But what has to be admitted is that most sincerely religious people adopt to the man of no established religion the same attitude as does the hypocrite: they join in the general cry.

They should look to their own houses; they should purge the temple of the money-lender and the knave; they should see that their field gives good harvest; they should remember that not to the atheist only but to the orthodox was it written: "Every tree therefore that doth not yield good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire." V There is a word to be said to the man for whom was invented the curious name agnostic.