'It was the appointed response. As she spoke I recollected the child
perfectly at Elsmere's class. I also remembered that she had no mother;
that her mother had died of cancer in June, visited and comforted to the
end by Elsmere and his wife.

'Well, the great question of course remains--is there a sufficient
strength of _feeling_ and _conviction_ behind these things? If so, after
all, everything was new once, and Christianity was but modified
Judaism.'

* * * * *

'December 22.

'I believe I shall soon be as deep in this matter as Elsmere. In Elgood
Street great preparations are going on for Christmas. But it will be a
new sort of Christmas. We shall hear very little, it seems, of angels
and shepherds, and a great deal of the humble childhood of a little
Jewish boy whose genius grown to maturity transformed the Western world.
To see Elsmere, with his boys and girls about him, trying to make them
feel themselves the heirs and fellows of the Nazarene child, to make
them understand something of the lessons that child must have learnt,
the sights he must have seen, and the thoughts that must have come to
him, is a spectacle of which I will not miss more than I can help. Don't
imagine, however, that I am converted exactly!--but only that I am more
interested and stimulated than I have been for years. And don't expect
me for Christmas. I shall stay here.'

* * * * *

'New Year's Day.

'I am writing from the library of the New Brotherhood. The amount of
activity, social, educational, religious, of which this great building
promises to be the centre is already astonishing. Everything, of course
including the constitution of the infant society, is as yet purely
tentative and experimental. But for a scheme so young, things are
falling into working order with wonderful rapidity. Each department is
worked by committees under the central council. Elsmere, of course, is
_ex-officio_ chairman of a large proportion; Wardlaw, Mackay, I, and a
few other fellows "run" the rest for the present. But each committee
contains working-men; and it is the object of everybody concerned to
make the workman element more and more real and efficient. What with the
"tax" on the members which was fixed by a general meeting, and the
contributions from outside, the society already commands a fair income.
But Elsmere is anxious not to attempt too much at once, and will go
slow