read of thanks." In
the years of the Notebook, he advanced very far in his pondering on
and acceptance of the great religious truths. But this did not as yet
mean attachment to a Church. Then he met Frances. "She actually
practised a religion. This was something utterly unaccountable both
to me and to the whole fussy culture in which she lived." Now that
they were married, Frances, as a convinced Anglo-Catholic, was
bringing more clergy and other Anglican friends into Gilbert's
circle. Moreover, he was lecturing all over England, and this brought
him into contact with all sorts of strange religious beliefs. "Amid
all this scattered thinking . . . I began to piece together fragments
of the old religious scheme; mainly by the various gaps that denoted
its disappearance. And the more I saw of real human nature, the more
I came to suspect that it was really rather bad for all these people
that it had disappeared."*

[* _Autobiography_, p. 177.]

In 1903-04 he had a tremendous battle (the detail of which will be
treated in the next chapter) in the _Clarion_ with Robert Blatchford.
In it he adumbrated many of the ideas that were later developed in
_Orthodoxy_. Of the arguments used by Blatchford and his atheist
friends, G.K. wrote that the effect on his own mind was: "Almost thou
persuadest me to be a Christian." In a diary kept by Frances
spasmodically during the years 1904-05, she notes that Gilbert has
been asked to preach as the first of a series of lay preachers in a
city church. She writes:

_March 16th_. One of the proudest days of my life. Gilbert preached
at St. Paul's, Covent Garden for the C.S.U. [Christian Social Union]
_Vox populi vox Dei_. A crammed church--he was very eloquent and
restrained. Sermons will be published afterwards.

Published they were: under the title, _Preachers from the Pew_.

_March 30th_. The second sermon: "The Citizen, the Gentleman and the
Savage." Even better than last week. "Where there is no vision the
people perisheth."

When it is remembered that the _Browning_, the _Watts_, _Twelve
Types_ and the _Napoleon of Notting Hill_ had all been published and
received with acclaim, it is touching that Frances should speak thus
of the "proudest day" of her life. That Gilbert should himself have
vision and show it to others remained her strongest aspiration. Not
thus felt all his admirers. The Blatchford controversy on matters
religious became more than many of them could bear.

A pla