Megalomaniacs

Sunday, February 21st., Cadogan Square, London.

One of the advantages of living here is that I am favourably situated for visits to Hyde Park. I was there today. I have joined congregations on scores and scores of occasions and have always been disappointed. I was again today. By the preachers, not by the experience which is usually instructive of human psychology. 

I stood for a while watching a girl preaching. She had seven or eight official supporters including two nice-looking girls much younger than herself. She 'held forth' - no other phrase would serve as well - in a strident voice, and with gestures both monotonous and violent, to a numerous crowd. She had nothing whatever to say except: "Seek God", and she said it many times over. No reasons or explanations were offered. The formula seemed to satisfy her. One of her supporters, an old man, hatless in the chilly breeze, ejaculated at intervals: "Praise God" and "Amen". 

More interesting was another group at the core of which two men were arguing upon God. One of them had just been preaching and now he was being 'tested'. They argued in quiet reasonable tones. Indeed so quietly that only the half dozen people nearest to them could hear what was said. The rest of us craned our necks in vain to catch some words of wisdom. The debaters were magnanimous to one another. Evidently their aim was not victory but truth, and neither appeared susceptible to persuasion in any case. So why debate at all, I thought? The argument proceeded for a long time and I observed the unfed crowd which went on hoping for crumbs and didn't get any.

Close by a smaller congregation listened to the polite contentions of two aged men who were smoking cigarettes. Again the same quiet reasonable tones, as of intellects well able to handle the most majestic and exciting themes without any inward disturbance. I heard one question: "Well then what do you call the thing that thinks? Do you call it the brain?" But the wind and the dull roar of Oxford Street traffic witheld the answer from me. I didn't feel much sense of loss.

I am convinced that the leading characteristic of the majority of the preachers is simple megalomania. I have never heard a single remark denoting any originality or vigour of mind. In contrast I have heard good effective speaking in the side streets of Glasgow on a Saturday night. The speakers however were advocating not godliness but birth control. Their object was to sell pamphlets about contraception, and they sold them.