But the impudence involved here is even more simple and startling. In
any case it seems brazenly irrational that because people have failed to
be Christians they should say that Christianity has failed. It might be
mildly suggested to them that they need not look quite so far afield
for the failure. My mother tells me not to climb a certain apple-tree to
steal apples, and I do it in spite of her. A bough breaks, a bull-dog
pins me by the throat, a policeman takes me to prison, whence I
eventually return to shake my head reproachfully at my mother, and say
in a sad and meditative manner: "I had hoped better things of you.
Alas, there is something pathetic about this failure of motherhood to
influence the modern mind; I fear that we must all admit that maternity
as an institution is barren and must be abandoned altogether."
-August 18, 1922, The New Witness
(quoted in The New American Church Monthly, Volume XII, 1922)
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