this time. I'll have no atheist for
my son! Change your views or leave the house at once."

Perhaps he expected his son to make some compromise; if so he showed
what a very slight knowledge he had of his character. Luke Raeburn had
certainly not been prepared for such extreme harshness, but with
the pain and grief and indignation there rose in his heart a mighty
resoluteness. With a face as hard and rugged as the granite rocks
without, he wished his father goodbye, and obeyed his orders.

Then had followed such a struggle with the world as few men would have
gone through with. Cut off from all friends and relations by his avowal
of atheism, and baffled again and again in seeking to earn his living,
he had more than once been on the very brink of starvation. By sheer
force of will he had won his way, had risen above adverse circumstances,
had fought down obstacles, and conquered opposing powers. Before long
he had made fresh friends and gained many followers, for there was an
extraordinary magnetism about the man which almost compelled those who
were brought into contact with him to reverence him.

It was a curious history. First there had been that time of grievous
doubt; then he had been thrown upon the world friendless and penniless,
with the beliefs and hopes hitherto most sacred to him dead, and in
their place an aching blank. He had suffered much. Treated on all sides
with harshness and injustice, it was indeed wonderful that he had not
developed into a mere hater, a passionate down-puller. But there was in
his character a nobility which would not allow him to rest at this
low level. The bitter hostility and injustice which he encountered
did indeed warp his mind, and every year of controversy made it more
impossible for him to take an unprejudiced view of Christ's teaching;
but nevertheless he could not remain a mere destroyer.

In that time of blankness, when he had lost all faith in God, when he
had been robbed of friendship and family love, he had seized desperately
on the one thing left him--the love of humanity. To him atheism meant
not only the assertion--"The word God is a word without meaning, it
conveys nothing to my understanding." He added to this barren confession
of an intellectual state a singularly high code of duty. Such a code as
could only have emanated from one about whom there lingered what Carlyle
has termed a great after-shine of Christianity. He held that the only
happiness worth having w