primitive husbandman, and, as we must now affirm, taught him
quite rightly, that God is in the seed, and that God is immortal.
And thus it became the test of Godhead that nothing that you
could do to it could kill it, and that when you buried it, it
would rise again in renewed life and beauty and give mankind
eternal life on condition that it was eaten and drunk, and again
slain and buried, to rise again for ever and ever. You may, and
indeed must, use John Barleycorn "right barbarouslee," cutting
him "off at knee" with your scythes, scourging him with your
flails, burying him in the earth; and he will not resist you nor
reproach you, but will rise again in golden beauty amidst a great
burst of sunshine and bird music, and save you and renew your
life. And from the interweaving of these two traditions with the
craving for the Redeemer, you at last get the conviction that
when the Redeemer comes he will be immortal; he will give us his
body to eat and his blood to drink; and he will prove his
divinity by suffering a barbarous death without resistance or
reproach, and rise from the dead and return to the earth in glory
as the giver of life eternal.


LOOKING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

Yet another persistent belief has beset the imagination of the
religious ever since religion spread among the poor, or, rather,
ever since commercial civilization produced a hopelessly poor
class cut off from enjoyment in this world. That belief is that
the end of this world is at hand, and that it will presently pass
away and be replaced by a kingdom of happiness, justice, and
bliss in which the rich and the oppressors and the unjust shall