Christian, or the
Church, or Jesus of Nazareth, but always and inevitably the man who
writes it and the man who loves it! His mind is possessed of an
inflaming and hateful image, which drives him to mockery and violence. I
want to replace it, if I can, by one of calm, of beauty and tenderness,
which may drive him to humility and sympathy. And this, indeed, is the
only way in which opinion is ever really altered--by the substitution of
one mental picture for another.

'But in the first place,' resumed the speaker, after a moment's pause,
changing his note a little, 'a word about myself. I am not here to-night
quite in the position of the casual stranger, coming down to your
district for the first time. As some of you know, I am endeavouring to
make what is practically a settlement among you, asking you working-men
to teach me, if you will, what you have to teach as to the wants and
prospects of your order, and offering you in return whatever there is in
me which may be worth your taking. Well, I imagine I should look at a
man who preferred a claim of that sort with some closeness! You may well
ask me for "antecedents," and I should like, if I may, to give them to
you very shortly.

'Well, then, though I came down to this place under the wing of Mr.
Edwardes' (some cheering) 'who is so greatly liked and respected here, I
am not a Unitarian, nor am I an English Churchman. A year ago I was the
vicar of an English country parish, where I should have been proud, so
far as personal happiness went, to spend my life. Last autumn I left it
and resigned my orders because I could no longer accept the creed of the
English Church.' Unconsciously the thin dignified figure drew itself up,
the voice took a certain dryness. All this was distasteful, but the
orator's instinct was imperious.

As he spoke about a score of pipes which had till now been active in
Flaxman's neighbourhood went down. The silence in the room became
suddenly of a perceptibly different quality.

'Since then I have joined no other religious association. But it is
not--God forbid!--because there is nothing left me to believe, but
because in this transition England it is well for a man who has broken
with the old things, to be very _patient_. No good can come of forcing
opinion or agreement prematurely. A generation, nay, more, may have to
spend itself in mere waiting and preparing for those new leaders and
those new forms of corporate action which any great revol