From Strindberg

Title of book-Zones of the Spirit

=Christ Is Risen.=

--The teacher said: "After we have had Christianity as a civilising agency for nineteen hundred years, people begin to discuss it. Is this the opportune time to ask whether Christ has existed and whether the documents of Christianity are genuine?

It reminds one of the author who wrote a book to prove that Napoleon never existed. It is as if we were now to discover that Cæsar's Commentaries_ are false, and that he never conquered Gaul, or as if we discussed whether the discovery of America had been useful. Ibsen's partisans have denied that Columbus discovered America; they say it was Leif Erikssen (perhaps we shall soon hear it was his wife).

"However, Christ returned again at the end of the last century, and was received by all. The pagans depicted him as the poor school-teacher; the anarchists celebrated him as the type of suffering humanity; the symbolists did homage to him as Christus Consolator; the socialists preached his gospel to the obscure, the weary, and heavy-laden. He was to be seen every-where--in the quarters of the French general staff and in the espionage office; in Lourdes and in Rome; on Mont Martre and in Moscow. His churches and convents were purified; his miracles explained by occultists, spiritists, hypnotists; science progressed and confirmed the prophecies. Finally we saw at the congress of religions in Chicago in 1897 that all peoples and religions of the world bent their knees when Christ's especial prayer, the Lord's Prayer, was recited. Then the believers gave each other the brotherly kiss and greeting, 'Christ is risen!'"