to your
district for the first time. As some of you know, I am endeavoring to
make what is practically a settlement among you, asking you working-men
to teach me, if you will, what you have to teach as to the wants and
prospects of your order, and offering you in return whatever there is
in me which may be worth your taking. Well, I imagine I should look at a
man who preferred a claim of that sort with some closeness! You may well
ask me for "antecedents," and I should like, if I may, to give them to
you very shortly.'

Well, then, though I came down to this place under the wing of Mr.
Edwardes' (some cheering) 'who is so greatly liked and respected here, I
am not a Unitarian, nor am I an English Churchman. A year ago I was the
rector of an English country parish, where I should have been proud, so
far as personal happiness went, to spend my life. Last autumn I left it
and resigned my orders because I could no longer accept the creed of the
English Church.' Unconsciously, the thin dignified figure drew itself
up, the voice took a certain dryness. All this was distasteful but the
orator's instinct was imperious.

As he spoke about a score of pipes which had till now been active
in Flaxman's neighborhood went down. The silence in the room became
suddenly of a perceptibly different quality.

'Since then I have joined no other religious association. But it is
not--God forbid!--because there is nothing left me to believe, but
because in this transition England it is well for a man who has broken
with the old things, to be very _patient_. No good can come of forcing
opinion or agreement prematurely. A generation, nay, more, may have to
spend itself in mere waiting and preparing for those new leaders and
those new forms of corporate action which any great revolution of
opinion, such as that we are now living through, has always produced in
the past, and will, we are justified in believing, produce again. But
the hour and the men will come, and "they also serve who only stand and
wait!"'

Voice and look had kindled into fire. The consciousness of his audience
was passing from him--the world of ideas was growing clearer.

'So much, then for personalities of one sort. There are some of another,
however, which I must touch upon for a moment. I am to speak to you
to-night of the Jesus of history, but not only as an historian. History
is good, but religion is better!--and if Jesus of Nazareth concerned me,
and, in my belief, c