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wavering reactions I am attempting to outline, responds to the dogmas of religion in the same manner as it responds to the whole tragic-comic spectacle of human life.

It is concerned with that larger and rarer beauty, the beauty that detaches itself, contour by contour, and colour by colour, from the drama of man's life upon the earth; from his pathetic attempts to give that life a unity, a dignity and graciousness, which in its mere chance-scattered elements it so often lacks.

Confronted with an idea like that of the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection, or of Vicarious Atonement, such a mental temper is compelled to insist very emphatically that a thing can be beautiful while it is scientifically impossible and morally outrageous!

It is morally outrageous that a man's sins can be completely obliterated by the contemplation of Another's sacrifice. It is also irrational and unscientific. The metaphysical philosophy of Buddhism has recognized this in its formulation of the eminently reasonable and eminently ethical doctrine of "Karma."

But these unscientific and immoral aspects of Vicarious Atonement do not detract in the remotest degree from the sense of indescribable beauty which rises up before us, like a pillar of fire, from the strange, perverse, fantastic concep-