Shun the thought of it, if it were possible! But let me
do what is given me to do! Here, in this human wilderness, may I spend
whatever of time or energy or faculty may be mine, in the faithful
attempt to help forward the new House of Faith that is to be, though my
utmost efforts should but succeed in laying some obscure stone in still
unseen foundations! Let me try and hand on to some other human soul, or
souls, before I die, the truth which has freed, and which is now
sustaining, my own heart. Can any man do more? Is not every man who
feels any certainty in him whatever bound to do as much? What matter if
the wise folk scoff, if even at times, and in a certain sense, one seems
to one's self ridiculous--absurdly lonely and powerless! All great
changes are preceded by numbers of sporadic, and as the bystander
thinks, impotent efforts. But while the individual effort sinks, drowned
perhaps in mockery, the general movement quickens, gathers force we know
not how, and--

'While the tired wave vainly breaking,
Seems here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in the main!'

Darkness sank over the river; all the gray and purple distance with its
dim edge of spires and domes against the sky, all the vague intervening
blacknesses of street, or bridge, or railway station were starred and
patterned with lights. The vastness, the beauty of the city filled him
with a sense of mysterious attraction, and as he walked on with his face
uplifted to it, it was as though he took his life in his hand and flung
it afresh into the human gulf.

'What does it matter if one's work be raw and uncomely! All that lies
outside the great organised traditions of an age must always look so.
Let me bear my witness bravely, not spending life in speech, but not
undervaluing speech--above all, not being ashamed or afraid of it,
because other wise people may prefer a policy of silence. A man has but
the one puny life, the one tiny spark of faith. Better be venturesome
with both for God's sake, than over-cautious, over-thrifty. And--to his
own Master he standeth or falleth!'

Plans of work of all kinds, literary and practical, thoughts of
preaching in some bare hidden room to men and women orphaned and
stranded like himself, began to crowd upon him. The old clerical
instinct in him winced at some of them. Robert had nothing of the
sectary about him by nature; he was always too