his movement was Julian Felsenburgh.
He had accomplished a work that--apart from God--seemed miraculous. He
had broken down the eternal division between East and West, coming
himself from the continent that alone could produce such powers; he had
prevailed by sheer force of personality over the two supreme tyrants of
life religious fanaticism and party government. His influence over the
impassive English was another miracle, yet he had also set on fire
France, Germany, and Spain. Percy here described one or two of his
little scenes, saying that it was like the vision of a god: and he
quoted freely some of the titles given to the Man by sober, unhysterical
newspapers. Felsenburgh was called the Son of Man, because he was so
pure-bred a cosmopolitan; the Saviour of the World, because he had slain
war and himself survived--even--even--here Percy's voice faltered--even
Incarnate God, because he was the perfect representative of divine man.

The quiet, priestly face watching opposite never winced or moved; and he
went on.

Persecution, he said, was coming. There had been a riot or two already.
But persecution was not to be feared. It would no doubt cause
apostasies, as it had always done, but these were deplorable only on
account of the individual apostates. On the other hand, it would
reassure the faithful; and purge out the half-hearted. Once, in the
early ages, Satan's attack had been made on the bodily side, with whips
and fire and beasts; in the sixteenth century it had been on the
intellectual side; in the twentieth century on the springs of moral and
spiritual life. Now it seemed as if the assault was on all three planes
at once. But what was chiefly to be feared was the positive influence of
Humanitarianism: it was coming, like the kingdom of God, with power; it
was crushing the imaginative and the romantic, it was assuming rather
than asserting its own truth; it was smothering with bolsters instead of
wounding and stimulating with steel or controversy. It seemed to be
forcing its way, almost objectively, into the inner world. Persons who
had scarcely heard its name were professing its tenets; priests absorbed
it, as they absorbed God in Communion--he mentioned the names of the
recent apostates--children drank it in like Christianity itself. The
soul "naturally Christian" seemed to be becoming "the soul naturally
infidel." Persecution, cried the priest, was to be welcomed like
salvation, prayed for, and grasped; but