"Alas! you speak too truly. Bridgeford and the Musical Banks for the
first three years fought tooth and nail to blind those whom it was their
first duty to enlighten. I was a Professor of the hypothetical language,
and you may perhaps remember how I was driven from my chair on account of
the fearlessness with which I expounded the deeper mysteries of
Sunchildism."

"Yes, I remember well how cruelly--" but my father was not allowed to get
beyond "cruelly."

"It was I who explained why the Sunchild had represented himself as
belonging to a people in many respects analogous to our own, when no such
people can have existed. It was I who detected that the supposed nation
spoken of by the Sunchild was an invention designed in order to give us
instruction by the light of which we might more easily remodel our
institutions. I have sometimes thought that my gift of interpretation
was vouchsafed to me in recognition of the humble services that I was
hereby allowed to render. By the way, you have received no illumination
this morning, have you?"

"I never do, sir, when I am in the company of one whose conversation I
find supremely interesting. But you were telling me about Bridgeford: I
live hundreds of miles from Bridgeford, and have never understood the
suddenness, and completeness, with which men like Professors Hanky and
Panky and Dr. Downie changed front. Do they believe as you and I do, or
did they merely go with the times? I spent a couple of hours with Hanky
and Panky only two evenings ago, and was not so much impressed as I could
have wished with the depth of their religious fervour."

"They are sincere now--more especially Hanky--but I cannot think I am
judging them harshly, if I say that they were not so at first. Even now,
I fear, that they are more carnally than spiritually minded. See how
they have fought for the aggrandisement of their own order. It is mainly
their doing that the Musical Banks have usurped the spiritual authority
formerly exercised by the straighteners."

"But the straighteners," said my father, "could not co-exist with
Sunchildism, and it is hard to see how the claims of the Banks can be
reasonably gainsaid."

"Perhaps; and after all the Banks are our main bulwark against the evils
that I fear will follow from the repeal of the laws against machinery.
This has already led to the development of a materialism which minimizes
the miraculous element in the Sunchild's ascent, as our own