morial Evensong, the
stars outside, and the golden evening brightening in the west of
the hymn, and the lesson about white robes and palms, presumably
of victory or harvest-homing. My friend waited for me outside
under the lamp. 'Very fine,' he said in his grimmest way, 'the
Anglican view of hopeful souls turned promiscuously into a sort
of orchard and rose-garden with plenty of light to gild them, and
rest to wrap them.' I smiled. 'True enough in its way,' I said.
'There's another side doubtless, yet the preaching of that
doesn't appeal to me particularly. I don't want to work on
people's apprehensions. But don't let me stand in your light.
You're a lay reader with a bishop's license. You can preach and
welcome to-morrow morning.' 'Trust me not to refuse,' he said. 'I
don't want to play up to apprehensions exactly. I want to state
what seem to me to be relentless laws of cause and effect, and to
show the only way with any sort of hope in Christ that I happen
by faith to see.' So he had preached that morning. He preached
quite simply on the trying of every man's work, on the burning of
flimsy work, on the saving of the workman, yet so as by fire.
There was a small but select gathering in the Church of Saint
Tertullian; two of the school managers even were there. Surely I
had baited the trap, I thought guiltily as I looked upon them,
by my over-amiabilities of the night before.

Yet that side was true enough, the side I had preached. And was
not this side also true in its way? The preacher seemed at first
to be referring to my own obsession with the words 'resist not
evil,' my following of Tolstoy in my own evangel. He was warm in
his commendation. 'And yet,' he said, 'let us remember a just
God's resistance to evil. He resists and judges righteously,
where we may neither resist nor judge. If we agree not to resist
evil violently for Jesus' sake, yet ought we not to warn people
of their God's unrelenting resistance? While we would not obscure
the fear of our just God by the fear of us unjust men, let us
remember our just God!' He spoke of judgment and of purgation, of
what seemed to be indicated hereafter by the stupidity and
cruelty of people's prejudices in South Africa. He painted quite
luridly the purgation he anticipated as likely for such as would
dare to wreck a child's education, and possibly her life for a
color-scruple. He glowed and kindled. There was no mistaking his
drift. He painted the fires of purgatio