e the day when the building was formally opened, when the gilt
letters over the door, 'The New Brotherhood of Christ,' shone out into
the dingy street, and when the first enrolment of names in the book of
the Brotherhood took place.

For two hours a continuous stream of human beings surrounded the little
table beside which Elsmere stood, inscribing their names, and receiving
from him the silver badge, bearing the head of Christ, which was to be
the outward and conspicuous sign of membership. Men came of all sorts:
the intelligent well-paid artisan, the pallid clerk or small accountant,
stalwart warehousemen, huge carters and draymen, the boy attached to
each by the laws of the profession often straggling lumpishly behind his
master. Women were there: wives who came because their lords came, or
because Mr. Elsmere had been 'that good' to them that anything they
could do to oblige him 'they would, and welcome'; prim pupil-teachers,
holding themselves with straight superior shoulders; children, who came
trooping in, grinned up into Robert's face and retreated again with red
cheeks, the silver badge tight clasped in hands which not even much
scrubbing could make passable.

Flaxman stood and watched it from the side. It was an extraordinary
scene: the crowd, the slight figure on the platform, the two great
inscriptions, which represented the only 'articles' of the new faith,
gleaming from the freshly coloured walls--

_'In Thee, O Eternal, have I put my trust;'_

_'This do in remembrance of Me;'_

--the recesses on either side of the hall lined with white marble, and
destined, the one to hold the names of the living members of the
Brotherhood, the other to commemorate those who had passed away (empty
this last save for the one poor name of 'Charles Richards'); the copies
of Giotto's Paduan Virtues--faith, fortitude, charity, and the
like--which broke the long wall at intervals. The cynic in the onlooker
tried to assert itself against the feeling with which the air seemed
overcharged. In vain.

'Whatever comes of it,' Flaxman said to himself with strong involuntary
conviction, 'whether he fails or no, the spirit that is moving here is
the same spirit that spread the Church, the spirit that sent out
Benedictine and Franciscan into the world, that fired the children of
Luther, or Calvin, or George Fox; the spirit of devotion, through a man,
to an idea; through one much-loved, much-trusted soul to some eternal
ver