in God?'

'Not in your sense, I am afraid,' said Herrick.

'I never argue with young atheists or habitual drunkards,' said Attwater
flippantly. 'Let us go across the island to the outer beach.'

It was but a little way, the greatest width of that island scarce
exceeding a furlong, and they walked gently. Herrick was like one in
a dream. He had come there with a mind divided; come prepared to study
that ambiguous and sneering mask, drag out the essential man from
underneath, and act accordingly; decision being till then postponed.
Iron cruelty, an iron insensibility to the suffering of others, the
uncompromising pursuit of his own interests, cold culture, manners
without humanity; these he had looked for, these he still thought he
saw. But to find the whole machine thus glow with the reverberation of
religious zeal, surprised him beyond words; and he laboured in vain, as
he walked, to piece together into any kind of whole his odds and ends
of knowledge--to adjust again into any kind of focus with itself, his
picture of the man beside him.

'What brought you here to the South Seas?' he asked presently.

'Many things,' said Attwater. 'Youth, curiosity, romance, the love of
the sea, and (it will surprise you to hear) an interest in missions.
That has a good deal declined, which will surprise you less. They go the
wrong way to work; they are too parsonish, too much of the old wife, and
even the old apple wife. CLOTHES, CLOTHES, are their idea; but clothes
are not Christianity, any more than they are the sun in heaven, or could
take the place of it! They think a parsonage with roses, and church
bells, and nice old women bobbing in the lanes, are part and parcel
of religion. But religion is a savage thing, like the universe it
illuminates; savage, cold, and bare, but infinitely strong.'

'And you found this island by an accident?' said Herrick.

'As you did!' said Attwater. 'And since then I have had a business, and
a colony, and a mission of my own. I was a man of the world before I was
a Christian; I'm a man of the world still, and I made my mission pay.
No good ever came of coddling. A man has to stand up in God's sight
and work up to his weight avoirdupois; then I'll talk to him, but not
before. I gave these beggars what they wanted: a judge in Israel, the
bearer of the sword and scourge; I was making a new people here; and
behold, the angel of the Lord smote them and they were not!'

With the very uttering of the