and feeling herself scarlet, squeezed herself into its farthest corner
and drew down her veil.

No, it would have to go. A religion that solemnly demanded of grown men
and women in the twentieth century that they should sit and listen with
reverential awe to a prehistoric edition of "Grimm's Fairy Stories,"
including Noah and his ark, the adventures of Samson and Delilah, the
conversations between Balaam and his ass, and culminating in what if it
were not so appallingly wicked an idea would be the most comical of them
all: the conception of an elaborately organized Hell, into which the God
of the Christians plunged his creatures for all eternity! Of what use
was such a religion as that going to be to the world of the future?

She must have knelt and stood mechanically, for the service was ended.
The pulpit was occupied by an elderly uninteresting-looking man with a
troublesome cough. But one sentence he had let fall had gripped her
attention. For a moment she could not remember it, and then it came to
her: "All Roads lead to Calvary." It struck her as rather good. Perhaps
he was going to be worth listening to. "To all of us, sooner or later,"
he was saying, "comes a choosing of two ways: either the road leading to
success, the gratification of desires, the honour and approval of our
fellow-men--or the path to Calvary."

And then he had wandered off into a maze of detail. The tradesman,
dreaming perhaps of becoming a Whiteley, having to choose whether to go
forward or remain for all time in the little shop. The statesman--should
he abide by the faith that is in him and suffer loss of popularity, or
renounce his God and enter the Cabinet? The artist, the writer, the mere
labourer--there were too many of them. A few well-chosen examples would
have sufficed. And then that irritating cough!