dge of ours, compared with
all that we yearn to know--but, such as it is, let me, very humbly and
very tentatively, endeavour to put it before you.'

At this point Flaxman's attention was suddenly distracted by a stir
round the door of entrance on his left hand. Looking round, he saw a
Ritualist priest, in cassock and cloak, disputing in hurried undertones
with the men about the door. At last he gained his point apparently, for
the men, with half-angry, half-quizzing looks at each other, allowed him
to come in, and he found a seat. Flaxman was greatly struck by the
face--by its ascetic beauty, the stern and yet delicate whiteness and
emaciation of it. He sat with both hands resting on the stick he held in
front of him, intently listening, the perspiration of physical weakness
on his brow and round his finely curved mouth. Clearly he could hardly
see the lecturer, for the room had become inconveniently crowded, and
the men about him were mostly standing.

'One of the St. Wilfrid's priests, I suppose,' Flaxman said to himself.
'What on earth is he doing _dans cette galere_? Are we to have a
disputation? That would be dramatic.'

He had no attention, however, to spare, and the intruder was promptly
forgotten. When he turned back to the platform he found that Robert,
with Mackay's help, had hung on a screen to his right, four or five
large drawings of Nazareth, of the Lake of Gennesaret, of Jerusalem, and
the Temple of Herod, of the ruins of that synagogue on the probable site
of Capernaum in which conceivably Jesus may have stood. They were bold
and striking, and filled the bare hall at once with suggestions of the
East. He had used them often at Murewell. Then, adopting a somewhat
different tone, he plunged into the life of Jesus. He brought to it all
his trained historical power, all his story-telling faculty, all his
sympathy with the needs of feeling. And bit by bit, as the quick nervous
sentences issued and struck, each like the touch of a chisel, the
majestic figure emerged, set against its natural background, instinct
with some fraction at least of the magic of reality, most human, most
persuasive, most tragic. He brought out the great words of the new
faith, to which, whatever may be their literal origin, Jesus, and Jesus
only, gave currency and immortal force. He dwelt on the magic, the
permanence, the expansiveness, of the young Nazarene's central
conception--the spiritualised, universalised 'Kingdom of God.' E