in Battersea most wisely do? Would they lie low and never mention the name of Cupid, or would they boldly say that he was none other than an appetite, a desire, and sometimes a holy self-sacrifice, having no existence except in the minds and bodies of living human beings?

Does Mr Chesterton really believe that the more cultivated Greeks actually had faith in the existence of a personal, self-conscious agent whom they named Aphrodite? Let him read his Hippolytus again; or, if he has not time nowadays to resume his Greek studies, let him take Professor Gilbert Murray's word for it that she was scarcely a goddess in the sense of a discarnate person, at least in the mind of Euripides and his audiences; and yet neither was she, on the other hand, a nothing, and therefore to be overlooked as if she were not a factor at all, cruel or kindly, in human experience.

Mr Chesterton, then, has not proved by any means that the moment Moloch and Cupid are to be worshipped in chapels in Battersea as they will be if his philosophy of religion becomes widespread in that suburb the rest of London must eschew the use of their names, for fear of confusing their devotees. So real and alive are the forces in the human heart which these terms personify, that when one says that Christ, on my assumption, is as dead as Moloch or Cupid, I can only answer that I wish to heaven Christ were as alive-in Battersea or any place else as they are. If the Redeemer-principle had been no more dead in the world than these, the Kingdom had come long ago. Mr Chesterton may take heart and hope, as a Christian, the moment he begins to find Christ as energetic, dominant, regulative and persistent in his beloved Battersea as are the cruelty and destruction of selfishness and the blindness of individual fascination of

person for person. It is no honour to Christ to suppose that he is more alive than he is; and it is unwise, from the point of view of idealistic patriotism, to pretend that Moloch and Cupid are less alive than they are. They may have no chapels in Battersea; but that may be because they are so secure of worship in deed and life that there is no occasion for formal ceremony.

Now let me cite a passage from a criticism by Mrs. Gilliland Husband, in a supplement to the Ethical World for March 15, 1908. It follows immediately upon a citation of my definition of religion, which is this :

Religion is the focussing of men's attention steadfastly and reverently upon some Being from which they believe that they have derived the greatest benefits, in order to derive still further benefits.

This definition Mrs Husband introduces with these words —

To find his definition of religion, Dr Coit follows the old and discredited plan of looking to the lower forms for it.

And she follows it with this comment :

One thinks irresistibly of the familiar definition of gratitude: "A lively sense of good things to come." This is indeed one of the things in the book which make us wonder whether, after all, Dr Coit is serious, or whether he is "getting at " us in a huge joke ;

Now, if this be accepted as the definition of religion, we shall be obliged to accept as religious in quality that emotion with which a pack of hounds focus their attention on the huntsman at the moment when he holds aloft the sacrificial fox. Very steadfastly and reverently they attend, for they know their master, and he carries a whip. They believe him to be (nay, they know him to be) the being from whom they have received the greatest benefits. They attend "in order to derive still further benefits." Dogs are noble animals; they are capable of a sincere, disinterested affection, which often puts so-called "love" in the human to

shame. But is this particular focussing of attention to which I have alluded one of the noblest moments in the annals of dog life? Can it be said to be a moment of canine religion?

Upon reading this passage, I am astonished to find in it a proof that there are persons to whom the word "benefits" has exclusively a selfish connotation. I had never for a moment dreamed that persons of literary culture, and at all acquainted with the life of the finest types of humanity, would imagine that the word "benefits" should refer simply to goods which we wish to get for ourselves, and not to goods which we wish to see bestowed upon those we love. I framed my definition after a close and prolonged study of the Lord's Prayer. I noted there an appeal, steadfast and reverent, involving a focussing of attention upon a Being from which the suppliants believed that they had derived the greatest benefits. The benefit they had derived was the enthusiasm for the redemption of mankind, which they had caught from their master. They had caught faith in the coming of the Kingdom; but they wanted more faith, more hope— a belief that the name of the blessed Being should become universally hallowed, that the will of God should be done on earth and the reign of lovingkindness established. And I thought I saw-to use the phrase which Mrs Gilliland Husband cites as a familiar definition of gratitude-I thought I saw in the Lord's Prayer a lively sense of good things to come. This definition may amuse the cynic, but it need not discourage the saint. Others may not believe it, but he is fully aware from experience that he also has received benefits, although he possesses nothing which the cynic may envy; and that he also expects good things to come, as much as the most hardened self-seeker of them all. It could not but be a shock to me, having

drafted my definition on the psychological outlines of the Lord's Prayer and in relation to the factors involved in the Lord's Prayer, to find that anyone should for an instant imagine that the word "benefits" and the desire to get further benefits should refer only to the lowest side of human nature, and not also to the highest activities and the profoundest realities of the human spirit. Mrs Husband says that my definition of religion is one of the things in my book which makes her wonder whether I am serious; but her comment makes me wonder whether, when writing it, she was not for the moment nodding.

But let us now hunt with what may some day become Mrs Gilliland Husband's famous pack of hounds. I was framing a definition of religion from the highest manifestation of it which I know-the Lord's Prayer; being perfectly sure that if it covered the highest manifestation of religion it would also comprehend the most primitive and the morally lowest. But I had not troubled to seek out instances of the lowest human religions; much less had I descended to observe sub-human manifestations of craving and volition. I am grateful to Mrs Gilliland Husband for having done this work for me. I accept her hound story as an admirable illustration of religion at a low and elemental stage, just as I accept the Lord's Prayer as its highest manifestation. My critic is quite right in saying that, according to my definition, the quality of emotion with which a pack of hounds would focus their attention on the huntsman at the moment when he holds aloft the sacrificial fox would be religious, provided the hounds were reverent in their attention to the huntsman, and provided the fox were the greatest benefit in existence which they wished to derive. I notice, however, one slip of logic in her admirable phrasing of her illustration. She

speaks of the sacrificial fox ; but here she is thinking not of the pack of hounds-for the fox is not being sacrificed for them-but of their god, the huntsman; and so I confess myself somewhat confused, not being intimately acquainted with sub-human psychology, but having studied rather the Old and New Testaments for my instances of emotions truly religious in quality. But the word "sacrificial," I am quite sure, should have been omitted; and, while I cannot put myself into the psychic position of the hounds, I cannot help suspecting that the fox, after all, was not the whole benefit they desired. That huntsman held them, so to speak, in the hollow of his hand. Not only the essential conditions of life for them depended upon their obedience to him, but he might punish and torture them for disobedience. Pathetic, so far as I can imagine it, is the state of mind of Mrs Husband's hounds; it is not they that are despicable, nor the quality of their emotion. Dogs, which are slaves to man-poor things! -do not manifest a religion unworthy of our respect when they look reverently to the huntsman; but what we must think of the huntsman is another matter.

In the very chapter where I gave my definition of religion, I had especially stated that I believed it would cover the lowest possible, as well as the highest conceivable, form of religion. Indeed, my study of the religions of primitive man has convinced me that a scholar like Mrs Husband, without taking an illustration from the kennel, might have cited instances of a far more degraded order than that presented by her hounds. Man, perhaps, as she says of dogs, is a noble being; but writ large in the history of human evolution is the record of religious practices which have sunk men below the level of any spiritual condition to which the lower animals have been dragged, even by English huntsmen. But I