was incarnate-sufficed, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, to obliterate there and then, and for the rest of his life, all that he had learned, and thought, and elaborated in his own mind against the divinity of the Saviour; and he who knelt an unbeliever arose a Christian.

It was as much as he could do to conceal his profound emotion from the people near him. He ardently wished himself alone in that church, that he might yield himself to the softening influence of the benignant spirit of grace that was melting his stubborn, vain, hard heart, and bringing him by a way he knew not to the truth as it is in Jesus.

Happy, thrice happy Henry! He had entered that hour on the path that should lead him to high and noble things, to peace and rest, calm, untroubled repose, from the distress of soul to which he had long been the prey.

Not that this result was obtained immediately. Grace, like Nature, is usually slow in its operations. Ripe fruits do not burst out with the early leaves in spring, and the work to be done in Henry's soul had as much need as they of the winds and rains and scorching heat, of agitating thoughts, of repentant tears, of fiery trials, that rightly borne make the perfect convert to the faith. So lost was he before the great mystery to which he had been converted, that he did not heed how the service was going till the choir began to sing with angelic sweetness the anthem, "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God!"

This he could say with truth, for never in his darkest day had he ceased to seek communion with the Supreme; but now the figure was so applicable to his state, it seemed as though the service had been

composed on his account. Thirsty and weary, hunted by heresies and doubts and cares, he panted for the "living water" to taste, to drink a life-giving draught of, never to thirst again! Thus musing, as one half in a trance, the time passed till the current of his meditation was turned into another channel. The clear voices of the white-robed choristers were singing "O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us!" and then the sacrificial nature of Christ's work was brought before his awakening mind, and, in a prayer that went to heaven's gate, winged with new-born faith and sped with agonizing earnestness, he cried that Kyrie eleison that was heard ere fairly uttered.

The service was over, the wreathing circles of incense had melted in the carved work of the roof, leaving behind a savour symbolical of that which the beautiful service had left in his soul. The soothing notes of the organ died away, but the music died not from his happy heart. He rose; the people bowed to the altar; he did the same; he would have liked to have kissed the pavement and embraced the stones on which his tears had fallen. This was no ritualism taught by diagrams or settled by canons; it was but the index of that which was burning within, the throes of the new birth, the sacred joy of returning life.

He left the building. Did he care to look at the outside? He did. He stood and looked long at the plain, severe brick architecture. It had more interest to him than minsters or basilica of fame; it was the place where the angels had set a ladder between his soul and heaven.

CHAPTER XXIV.

DAYBREAK.

No figure will so aptly describe the mental condition of the man of whom we write as that of the daybreak. This is the prince of similes--the oldest and most universal; the foundation of multitudinous myths and the theme of the poets from the Northern Seas to the remotest East. We need no excuse for using the figure, for it can never become hackneyed. While the world lasts the sunrise will be the type of joy and. the dawning day-the aptest figure of mental progress. Reared with no settled or scientific basis for the religion he was told to profess, with no fixed principles of belief, with no foundation for the "opinions he and his fellow-dissenters held that could bear for an instant the test of logical examination, his scepticism was simply the natural consequence of the system in which he had been nurtured.

If men were not so much "better than their creed" the heresies of the Christian world would have made more havock of faith and morals than they have. Henry had proved, again and again, that to begin to think was for a Dissenter to take the first step towards utter scepticism. So weak, so rotten, so utterly unscientific and illogical are the foundations on which their religious belief rests, that their colleges, their theological seminaries, are simply the very hot-beds of infidelity and the nurseries of negation and destructive philosophy. And so because he had dared to think, he had lost all faith; he was as a dweller in an Eastern house built on piles, who going down to the deep foundations to examine their strength, had found

them pierced and hollowed by the destructive white ant that eats away the whole inner substance and leaves but the outward show of strength behind; and knowing that at the first rude shock of question or of doubt the superstructure must fall, he had left the dangerous shelter, and was just a houseless, homeless, weather-beaten wanderer in consequence. The storm had met him, the tempest had done its worst upon him, and the night had found him as it finds the bravest of the homeless and the lonely-despairing. If the monk's voice speaking Heaven's message, "Young man, I say unto thee, Arise," was as the streaks of early light across the Eastern sky, the chanting of the Nicene Creed at St. Matthew's was the rosy dawn that roused him from his heavy sleep and set him on his feet. There was no warmth in the day as yet, the promise only of the coming day was there, the darkness seemed only disturbed, not dispelled, the gloom and shadows were still oppressive; but just as the husbandman by the fingers of Aurora is bidden to his work, so did the man of our story heed the call, for he knew that the light had come at last to enable him to pursue his search. "Arise, for it is day," not noon-day for food and rest and joy, but daybreak for work. And if "Laborare est orare" is true, not less true often is the converse Orare est laborare," "To pray is to work." He therefore fell to prayer, he knew he had another home to seek, he knew his religious training had hitherto been false, not that there was not some good in it, but that there must be, where he knew not, some better exponent of Christianity; some nobler and worthier representative of Christ's teaching than were either the Baptist, the Independent, or the Unitarian Faiths, whose tenets and whose teachings he was

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familiar with and had found unsafe. Bracing himself for the earnest work before him, and strengthened by prayer and confidence that the petition "Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief" would certainly be heard, he sought by books and inquiry to know more and more of the teaching of the Tractarian School of the Church of England.

He considered, rightly or wrongly, that the doctrines of that Church were more literally and logically set forth by the Puseyites than by the Evangelical party, and had frequently heard Boanerges say that none of the latter could be honest, as they ought to be Dissenters on their own showing, whilst the Puseyites could at least appeal to the Prayer-book in support of their teaching.

Reading and thinking, therefore, of these things brought round another Sunday, bright oases in the desert they were to him now. He felt that, though Lucy was with him no more, to help him with her sweet sympathy, she was walking with him, and watching over him, knowing the truth herself now, and drawing him to God by the strong bonds of her goodness and love. A subduing sense of his manifest helplessness and the softening influence of sorrow was bringing him to the plastic condition of humility necessary for the reception of the shape the heavenly potter would have his mind assume. It was, as we said, Sunday morning and again he was at St. Matthew's. It was eleven o'clock, the hour at which they celebrated in the presence of the whole congregation the "Communion Service." It was the custom at that hour every Sunday to perform this service with the greatest solemnity, the communicants and the non-communicants together assisting at the devotional part of the ceremony; this though strange