ence, and give one a lively belief in the virtue and
worth of human endeavour. But all this is set down, as I say, in a
tentative and not in a philosophical form.

And I have also in these pages kept advisedly clear of Christian
doctrines and beliefs; not because I do not believe wholeheartedly in
the divine origin and unexhausted vitality of the Christian revelation,
but because I do not intend to lay rash and profane hands upon the
highest and holiest of mysteries.

I will add one word about the genesis of the book. Some time ago I
wrote a number of short tales of an allegorical type. It was a curious
experience. I seemed to have come upon them in my mind, as one comes
upon a covey of birds in a field. One by one they took wings and flew;
and when I had finished, though I was anxious to write more tales, I
could not discover any more, though I beat the covert patiently to
dislodge them.

This particular tale rose unbidden in my mind. I was never conscious
of creating any of its incidents. It seemed to be all there from the
beginning; and I felt throughout like a man making his way along a road,
and describing what he sees as he goes. The road stretched ahead of me;
I could not see beyond the next turn at any moment; it just unrolled
itself inevitably and, I will add, very swiftly to my view, and was thus
a strange and momentous experience.

I will only add that the book is all based upon an intense belief in
God, and a no less intense conviction of personal immortality and
personal responsibility. It aims at bringing out the fact that our life
is a very real pilgrimage to high and far-off things from mean and
sordid beginnings, and that the key of the mystery lies in the frank
facing of experience, as a blessed process by which the secret purpose
of God is made known to us; and, even more, in a passionate belief in
Love, the love of friend and neighbour, and the love of God; and in the
absolute faith that we are all of us, from the lowest and most degraded
human soul to the loftiest and wisest, knit together with chains of
infinite nearness and dearness, under God, and in Him, and through Him,
now and hereafter and for evermore.

A.C.B.

THE OLD LODGE, MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, _January_, 1912.

The Child of the Dawn

I

Certainly the last few moments of my former material, worn-out life, as
I must still call it, were made horrible enough for me. I came to, after
the operation, in a deadl