elements, and again and again through the centuries is employed in other organisms.

""How then,' men have asked, ‘can you believe that the body you have deposited beneath the earth shall collect from the universe its dissipated particles and rise again?'

"Hitherto we have been content to put the question aside with a simple faith that 'with God all things are possible.' But to-day we are enabled to have a further comprehension of the Lord's words, 'It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.'

"Doubtless those who, even among our own company of Evangelical Protestants, have attached too much importance to the teaching of the so-called 'Fathers of the Church' (who so early corrupted the sweet simplicity of the Gospel) will find themselves compelled to a more spiritual explanation of some passages of Holy Scripture; but Faith will find little difficulty in rightly dividing and interpreting the word of Truth.

"The Protestant cause has little to fear from facts. We have been by God's Providence gradually prepared for a great elucidation of the truth about the Resurrection.

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'Those who studied with attention the treatise of the late Frederick W. H. Myers (the man who, of all moderns, has best appreciated the personality of Paul the apostle) had come to a conviction on the survival of Human Personality after death on scientific grounds.

"The Resurrection of the Lord Jesus was no longer to them a thing incredible,' its unique character was recognised as consisting in its spiritual power.

666 Some doubted,' as on the mountain in Galilee. Protestantism on the Continent, especially in Germany, the home of what is misnamed the 'Higher Criticism,' has been hampered in this way by the study of the

'letter,' and so in some degree has lost the assistance of 'the spirit which giveth life.'

"But the great heart of Protestant England is still sound, and whilst Rome and Ritualism are aghast as the foundation of their fabric of lies crumbles into dust, we stand sure and steadfast, rejoicing in hope.

Some readjustment of formularies may be conceded to weak brethren.

"Our great Reformers drew up that marvellous manifesto of the Protestant faith-' Articles agreed upon by the archbishops and bishops of Both Provinces, and the whole clergy in the Convocation holden at London in the year 1562 for the avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for the establishing of consent touching True Religion.'

"England was at that time-alas, how often has it been so!-inclined to compromise.

There were timid men amongst the great divines who brought us out of Babylon, and the 4th article of the Thirty-nine was notoriously drawn up in antagonism to the teaching of the holy Silesian nobleman, Caspar Schwenckfeld, to satisfy the scruples of the sacerdotal party, which clung to the benefices of the Establishment then as now.

"The omission of twelve words would remove all doubt as to its interpretation. We may be content to affirm that 'Christ did truly rise again from death' without stating further and took again his body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining.'

"It has always been the curse of Christendom that man desired to express in words the ineffable.

"Intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.'

"But it need not now be difficult with the aid of a Protestant Parliament, which has so recently and so

gloriously determined on the expulsion of sacerdotalists, to modify, in deference to pious scruples, too rigid definitions. Time will suffice for these necessary modifica

tions of sixteenth-century theology.

"In the present, the gain is ours.

We shall hear less

of the cultus of the 'Sacred Heart' in future. The blasphemous mimicry of the Mass will perish from amongst us.

"No man, in England at least, will dare to affirm that the flesh in which the Saviour bore our sins upon the Cross is exposed for adoration on the so-called ‘altar.'

"As Sir Edwin Arnold put it, on the true grave of Jesus 'the Syrian stars look down,' but the risen Christ, glorious in His Spiritual Body, reigns over the hearts of his true followers, and we look forward in faith to our departure from the earthly tabernacle, which is dissolved day by day, knowing that we also have a spiritual house not made with hands eternal in the heavens."

As he read the clever trimming article and marked the bitterness of its tone, the priest's face grew red with anger and contempt.

This facile acceptance of the Great Horror, this insolent conversion of it to party ends, this flimsy pretence of reconciling statements, which, if true, made Christianity a thing of nought, to a novel and trumped-up system of adherence to it, filled him with bitter antagonism.

But, useful as the article was as showing the turn many men's minds were taking, there was no time to trouble about it now.

To-morrow the great meeting of those who still believed Christ died and rose again from the dead was to be held.

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The terrible Report" had been issued. During the forty hours of its existence everything was already be

ginning to crumble away. To-morrow the Church Militant must speak to the world.

It was said, moreover, that the great wave of infidelity and mockery which was sweeping hourly over the country would culminate in a great riot to-morrow.

Everything seemed dark, black, hopeless.

He picked up the Report once more to study it, as he had done fifty times that day.

But before he opened it he knelt in prayer.

As he prayed, so sweet and certain an assurance came to him, he seemed so very near to the Lord, that doubt and gloom fled before that Presence.

What were logic, proofs of stone-work, the reports of archæologists, to This?

Here in this lonely chamber Christ was, and spoke with His servant, bidding him be of good comfort.

With bright eyes, full of the glow of one who walks with God, the priest opened the pamphlet once more.

A

CHAPTER VII

THE HOUR OF CHAOS

LTHOUGH, during the first days of the Darkness,

hundreds of thousands of Christian men and women were chilled almost to spiritual death, and although the lamp of Faith was flickering very low, it was not in London that the far-reaching effects of the discovery at Jerusalem were most immediately apparent.

In that great City there is an outward indifference, bred of a million different interests, which has something akin to the supreme indifference of Nature. The many voices never blend into one, so that the ear may hear them in a single mighty shout.

But in the grimmer North public opinion is heard more readily, and is more quickly visible. In the great centres of executive toil the vital truths of religion seem to enter more insistently into the lives of men and women whose environment presents them with fewer distractions than elsewhere. Often, indeed, this interest is a political interest rather than a deeply Christian one, a matter of controversy rather than feeling. Certain it is that all questions affecting religious beliefs loom large and have a real importance in the cities of the North.

It was Wednesday evening at Walktown.

Mr. Byars was reading the service. The huge, ugly church was lit with rows of gas-jets, arranged in coronæ painted a drab green. But the priest's voice, strained and worn, echoed sadly and with a melancholy cadence