It was an audience of earnest thinking men and women, by no means likely to be led astray by unreasonable teaching; decidedly an intellectual audience. So far good. At the appointed time the monk appeared with a few of his followers in the ancient habits that the English had then seldom seen out of pictures. Henry thought it very droll when a good-looking young monk going up the tiers of seats on the platform to play the organ, showed his bare legs under his habit. This was grotesque, but his

execution on the instrument atoned for his lack of unmentionables. And then Brother Clement began the service. He said the day was the Feast of the Transfiguration, and the service would be in accord with the festival, that in fact they would sing the vespers of the Sunday, selected from the Latin Breviary. Instead of the ordinary service of the Church of England, it was the Monastic service of the Catholic Church done into English and slightly altered, so as not to shock the prejudices of the congregation too severely. Five Psalms were chanted to exquisite Gregorian melodies, Brother Clement singing in a rich voice a short solo called in ecclesiastical language an Antiphon, before and after each Psalm; this Antiphon gives the key-note to the spirit of the Psalm in its application to the festival. Of course it

was quite new to Henry, but the popular form in which the service was cast attracted his attention to every detail. What struck him most was the deep earnestness of the officiant, devoid of anything approaching to cant. He was in matter and style totally unlike any other clergyman of the Establishment he had ever seen. Not less powerful in his mastery over the audience than the Dissenting orators with whom he was familiar, he carried with him a

presence, spoke with a voice, and bore the impress of a refinement that proved him to be what they very seldom were, of gentle birth and University training. These will never be without their special influence over us as Englishmen.

He commenced his sermon, taking for his text the miracle of the raising of the son of the widow of Nain:"And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother."

Henry thought he preached as though he could inspect his soul, and see through a window in his heart all that was passing in his mind, so exactly was the discourse suited to his taste. The note-book was forgotten, the reporter's pencil dropped from his fingers, the speaker had him spell-bound, the rest of the audience seemed to fade away, and he alone was being wrestled with by the instrument of Christ. He seemed to be holding a private conference for his benefit alone, and Henry hung on his lips, and let not word or accent, look or tone, lose its effect; he was as clay on the potter's wheel. He was the man on the bier, it was he whose spiritual life was dead, he who, wrapped in the cerements of infidelity-Godless and hopeless, was a moral corpse. Was it not the death conqueror, Christ himself, who was speaking to him by the preacher's voice, "I say unto thee, Arise"? Was not the same power that accompanied these words at Nain prevailing with him then, stirring in his stiffened limbs, unfastening the bonds of death and giving him new life, and then delivering him to his mother, the Church of God, his lawful nurse, for strengthening and fostering care?

This teaching was new and very strange to Henry; he had never looked upon the Church as anything

but an expression of a vague idea, an invisible, voiceless, unauthoritative thing. He knew his Dissenting friends believed in an invisible something they called the Church, but he knew they repudiated any idea of its having a living voice, an accessible habitat, or any authority to teach or command. He had just reached that point when dispirited, heart-sick, and weary, he like some Nile explorer, some Mungo Park baffled and foiled at every turn, had just cast himself on the arid desert to die, one more victim to its mirage. And now there seemed to come a voice out of heaven, like the angel's voice to Hagar in the wilderness, when death had almost made an end of him, saying, "Arise, take up the lad," and, pointing to the healing water of life, for want of which he was perishing, saved him.

Did he pray? Yes, but not in any form of speech, or aught that words could express; but doubtless something went up to heaven far more subtle than words, and passed through its portals when they would, perhaps, have sunk back again to earth, too heavy to reach them at all.

He dismissed his friend, made the best of his way home, shut himself in his room, and mused for an hour and more, wondering what to do next. Rising, he cast his eye along his book-shelves; they seemed to repel him, as strong food is rejected by the fever convalescent. He turned his back on them; but one caught his eye that he had never read, had bought merely as a specimen of good English, Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living," it was an old copy, 1715, he would look at it, it would be a change and would amuse him for an hour, he thought. The charming style and brilliant thoughts of the old divine vastly took his fancy; he read his quaint advice, and pondered over his beauti

S

ful prayers till he prayed them while he read, then went on to the chapter on faith, till he came to these words:-"Will you lay your life on it, your estate, your reputation, that the doctrine of Jesus Christ is true in every article?" A great horror seized the man, for he dare not say, "I will!" and dare as little say, “I will not!" So it had come to this, he did not know on whose side he was, and death, perchance, would find him still undecided! And what had Christ done to him that he should turn his back on Him? How had He changed that he should leave Him? Bursting into tears, he fell on his face before God, and asked for help-yet still believed not Christ was God.

CHAPTER XXIII.

66 ET INCARNATUS EST."

It was on the morning of the following Sunday, a bright and heavenly morning, that Henry started out to find a church of the Puseyite order, by name St. Matthew, Newington. He had often been told that the services were extremely ritualistic there, that the ceremonies were even Roman, so advanced were they. Now, having the desire so strong he could not repress it, to know a little more about the teaching of that "Mother" of whom the monk had spoken; he thought he might learn what he wanted if he went thither. He had a Book of Common Prayer, and knew fairly well how to use it; he reached the church as the service of Holy Communion was being celebrated with considerable pomp; the clergy were using incense, and he was not repelled; they were in

gorgeous vestments, and strange to say, he saw nothing inappropriate in their use; he felt very earnest, powerfully led by something that was working within and around him, leading him he knew not whither, but rightly he was sure. They commenced to chant to a severe yet most beautiful melody, a, confession of faith, the creed "Nicene:" they were standing, priests and people facing the communion table. Grandly the march of Christian doctrines proceeded, till suddenly at the words, "Who for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man," the whole congregation, priests and people, knelt reverently down, with bowed heads and slow and solemn song. At that sacred moment, Henry was seized with a great and overwhelming repentance for his horrible blasphemy in speaking and believing against the divinity of Jesus Christ, the God-man, Very God of very God.

In the self-same instant that the involuntary tears of sorrow for his infidelity came from his stricken heart, while he knelt (for he could not have helped kneeling, so pressed was he by some mighty power without him), the doubts he had admitted and entertained concerning Him whom they were adoring, vanished from his soul, as the mist rolls from the hilltop before the driving wind, and unveils the sun behind it.

The Spirit of God had chosen that time and place, at once and for ever, to crush the Arian heresy in the unhappy man. No learned arguments nor tongue of orator, no syllogism, no proof-passages from Scripture or Fathers, but the simple unvarnished statement of the great dogma, the centre round which revolves the whole Christian doctrine-"Et incarnatus est," and