theory that everything was good had become an orgy of everything that
was bad.

On the other side our idealist pessimists were represented by the old
remnant of the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius and his friends had really given
up the idea of any god in the universe and looked only to the god
within. They had no hope of any virtue in nature, and hardly any hope of
any virtue in society. They had not enough interest in the outer world
really to wreck or revolutionise it. They did not love the city enough
to set fire to it. Thus the ancient world was exactly in our own
desolate dilemma. The only people who really enjoyed this world were
busy breaking it up; and the virtuous people did not care enough about
them to knock them down. In this dilemma (the same as ours) Christianity
suddenly stepped in and offered a singular answer, which the world
eventually accepted as _the_ answer. It was the answer then, and I think
it is the answer now.

This answer was like the slash of a sword; it sundered; it did not in
any sense sentimentally unite. Briefly, it divided God from the cosmos.
That transcendence and distinctness of the deity which some Christians
now want to remove from Christianity, was really the only reason why any
one wanted to be a Christian. It was the whole point of the Christian
answer to the unhappy pessimist and the still more unhappy optimist. As
I am here only concerned with their particular problem I shall indicate
only briefly this great metaphysical suggestion. All descriptions of
the creating or sustaining principle in things must be metaphorical,
because they must be verbal. Thus the pantheist is forced to speak of
God _in_ all things as if he were in a box. Thus the evolutionist has,
in his very name, the idea of being unrolled like a carpet. All terms,
religious and irreligious, are open to this charge. The only question is