He described the scene in the
Club, and brought out the dreams swarming in his mind, presenting them
for Flaxman's criticism, and dealing with them himself, with that
startling mixture of acute common-sense and eloquent passion which had
always made him so effective as an initiator. Flaxman listened dubiously
at first, as he generally listened to Elsmere, and then was carried
away, not by the beliefs, but by the man. _He_ found his pleasure in
dallying with the magnificent _possibility_ of the Church; doubt with
him applied to all propositions, whether positive or negative; and he
had the dislike of the aristocrat and the cosmopolitan for the
provincialisms of religious dissent. Political dissent or social reform
was another matter. Since the Revolution, every generous child of the
century has been open to the fascination of political or social Utopias.
But religion! _What--what is truth?_ Why not let the old things alone?

However, it was through the social passion, once so real in him, and
still living, in spite of disillusion and self-mockery, that Robert
caught him, had in fact been slowly gaining possession of him all these
months.

'Well,' said Flaxman one day, 'suppose I grant you that Christianity of
the old sort shows strong signs of exhaustion, even in England, and in
spite of the Church expansion we hear so much about; and suppose I
believe with you that things will go badly without religion--what then?
Who can have a religion for the asking?'

'But who can have it without? _Seek_, that you may find. Experiment; try
new combinations. If a thing is going that humanity can't do without,
and you and I believe it, what duty is more urgent for us than the
effort to replace it?'

Flaxman shrugged his shoulders.

'What will you gain? A new sect?'

'Possibly. But what we _stand_ to gain is a new social bond,' was the
flashing answer--'a new compelling force in man and in society. Can you
deny that the world wants it? What are you economists and sociologists
of the new type always pining for? Why, for that diminution of the self
in man which is to enable the individual to see the _world's_ ends
clearly, and to care not only for his own but for his neighbour's
interest, which is to make the rich devote themselves to the poor, and
the poor bear with the rich. If man only _would_, he _could_, you say,
solve all the problems which oppress him. It is man's will which is
eternally defective, eternally inadequate. Wel