But I cannot make out why, with his enthusiasm for heathen habits and
traditions, the Dean should wish to spread in the East the ideas which he
has found so dreadfully unsettling in the West. If some thousands of
years of paganism have produced the patience and industry that Dean Inge
admires, and if some thousand years of Christianity have produced the
sentimentality and sensationalism which he regrets, the obvious deduction
is that Dean Inge would be much happier if he were a heathen Chinese.
Instead of supporting Christian missions to Korea or Japan, he ought to be
at the head of a great mission in London for converting the English to
Taoism or Buddhism. There his passion for the moral beauties of paganism
would have free and natural play; his style would improve; his mind would
begin slowly to clear; and he would be free from all sorts of little
irritating scrupulosities which must hamper even the most Conservative
Christian in his full praise of sweating and the sack.
In Christendom he will never find rest. The perpetual public criticism
and public change which is the note of all our history springs from a
certain spirit far too deep to be defined. It is deeper than democracy;
nay, it may often appear to be non-democratic; for it may often be the
special defence of a minority or an individual.
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