than his father, himself a lay-preacher, when he was
not the business manager of a large hardware store,--a lay-preacher with
a very gentle face, the face of a father, a woman, a saint, and a
failure all in one.

I say failure by no means unkindly. Londonderry's father was made to be
a good bishop, to radiate from a hallowed security sweet lights of
blessing. His talent was gentleness, not in itself a fighting
quality,--a quality that needs a place prepared for it, needs the hand
of strength or opportunity to set it upon the hill. That he had made
himself learned, that his sympathy knew much of the soul of man, that he
was conscious of a very near communion with the Divine--were
qualifications that alone might not avail. Yet were they not lost, for,
apart from their own restricted exercise in the circle of his own little
"cause" and the other causes for which, in the technical phrase, he
would occasionally "supply," they had passed into his son, and met in
him other more energetic qualities, such as a magnetic eloquence, a love
of laughter, and a mighty humanity.

Thus Theophilus Londonderry was partly his father licked into shape and
partly something bigger and more effectively vital.

At sixteen he was learned in all the theologies; at nineteen he was said
to have preached a great sermon; at twenty-two he was the success of a
big political meeting; and at twenty-four he was the new lay-pastor
at New Zion.

This is not to be the theological history of a soul, so I shall not
attempt to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance of
Christian dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if he
could have told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered the
point as unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered in
terms of Christianity. The message was good, the meaning honest. He
would, no doubt, have preferred another pulpit with other formulas, but
that pulpit was not forthcoming; so, like all the strong and the wise,
he chose the formulas offered to him, using as few as possible, and
humanising all he used; and never for a single second of time, whatever
the apparent contradictions on the surface, was Theophilus Londonderry
that poorest of all God's creatures,--a hypocrite. However you may judge
him, you must never make that mistake about him.

CHAPTER III

OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT

New Zion, despite its name, was, as I have hinted, no longer new. The