have shown, and I am thankful to have lived
long enough to have known you. It has, at least, been given one to
realize that times have changed, that we are on the verge of a mighty
future. I will be frank to say that ten years ago, if this had happened,
I should have recommended you for trial. Now I can only wish you
Godspeed. I, too, can see the light, my friend. I can see, I think,
though dimly, the beginnings of a blending of all sects, of all
religions in the increasing vision of the truth revealed in Jesus
Christ, stripped, as you say, of dogma, of fruitless attempts at
rational explanation. In Japan and China, in India and Persia, as well
as in Christian countries, it is coming, coming by some working of the
Spirit the mystery of which is beyond us. And nations and men who even
yet know nothing of the Gospels are showing a willingness to adopt what
is Christ's, and the God of Christ."

Holder was silent, from sheer inability to speak.

"If you had needed an advocate with me," the bishop continued, "you
could not have had one to whose counsel I would more willingly have
listened, than that of Horace Bentley. He wrote asking to come and see
me, but I went to him in Dalton Street the day I returned. And it gives
me satisfaction, Mr. Holder, to confess to you freely that he has taught
me, by his life, more of true Christianity than I have learned in all my
experience elsewhere."

"I had thought," exclaimed the rector, wonderingly, "that I owed him
more than any other man."

"There are many who think that--hundreds, I should say," the bishop
replied.... "Eldon Parr ruined him, drove him from the church.... It
is strange how, outside of the church, his influence has silently and
continuously grown until it has borne fruit in--this. Even now," he
added after a pause, "the cautiousness, the dread of change which comes
with old age might, I think, lead me to be afraid of it if I--didn't
perceive behind it the spirit of Horace Bentley."

It struck Holder, suddenly, what an unconscious but real source of
confidence this thought had likewise been to him. He spoke of it.

"It is not that I wouldn't trust you," the bishop went on. "I have
watched you, I have talked to Asa Waring, I have read the newspapers. In
spite of it all, you have kept your head, you have not compromised the
dignity of the Church. But oh, my friend, I beg you to bear in mind
that you are launched upon deep waters, that you have raised up many
enemi