ago, though the form of it has become quite different.

Then there are other causes modifying this hostility. The world has
got a dash of Christianity into it since Jesus Christ spoke. We
cannot say that it is half Christianised, but some of the issues and
remoter consequences of Christianity have permeated the general
conscience, and the ethics of the Gospel are largely diffused in such
a land as this. Thus Christian men and others have, to a large
extent, a common code of morality, as long as they keep on the
surface; and they not only do a good many things exactly alike, but
do a great many things from substantially the same motives, and have
the same way of looking at much. Thus the gulf is partly bridged
over; and the hostility takes another form. We do not wrap Christians
in pitch and stick them up for candles in the Emperor's garden
nowadays, but the same thing can be done in different ways. Newspaper
articles, the light laugh of scorn, the whoop of exultation over the
failures or faults of any prominent man that has stood out boldly on
Christ's side; all these indicate what lies below the surface, and
sometimes not so very far below. Many a young man in a Manchester
warehouse, trying to live a godly life, many a workman at his bench,
many a commercial traveller in the inn or on the road, many a student
on the college benches, has to find out that there is a great gulf
between him and the man who sits next to him, and that he cannot be
faithful to his Lord, and at the same time, down to the depths of his
being, a friend of one who has no friendship to his Master.

Still another fact masks the antagonism, and that is, that after all,
the world, meaning thereby the aggregate of godless men, has a
conscience that responds to goodness, though grumblingly and
reluctantly. After all, men do know that it is better to be good,