old Nevil. Upon my honour, I haven't a notion of what it all
means, and I don't believe the old rascal Shrapnel has himself. And pray
be patient, my dear colonel. You will find him practical presently. I'll
skip, if you tell me to. Darkness radiates, does it!

'"The creed that rose in heaven sets below; and where we had an
angel we have claw-feet and fangs. Ask how that is! The creed is
much what it was when the followers diverged it from the Founder.
But humanity is not where it was when that creed was food and
guidance. Creeds will not die not fighting. We cannot root them up
out of us without blood."

'He threatens blood!--'

'"Ours, my Beauchamp, is the belief that humanity advances beyond
the limits of creeds, is to be tied to none. We reverence the
Master in his teachings; we behold the limits of him in his creed--
and that is not his work. We truly are his disciples, who see how
far it was in him to do service; not they that made of his creed a
strait-jacket for humanity. So, in our prayers we dedicate the
world to God, not calling him great for a title, no--showing him we
know him great in a limitless world, lord of a truth we tend to,
have not grasped. I say Prayer is good. I counsel it to you again
and again: in joy, in sickness of heart. The infidel will not pray;
the creed-slave prays to the image in his box."'

'I've had enough!' Colonel Halkett ejaculated.

'"We,"' Captain Baskelett put out his hand for silence with an ineffable
look of entreaty, for here was Shrapnel's hypocrisy in full bloom:

'"We make prayer a part of us, praying for no gifts, no
interventions; through the faith in prayer opening the soul to the
undiscerned. And take this, my Beauchamp, for the good in prayer,
that it makes us repose on the unknown with confidence, makes us
flexible to change, makes us ready for revolution--for life, then!
He who has the fountain of prayer in him will not complain of
hazards. Prayer is the recognition of laws; the soul's exercise and
source of strength; its thread of conjunction with them. Prayer for
an object is the cajolery of an idol; the resource of superstition.
There you misread it, Beauchamp. We that fight the living world
must have the universal for succour of the truth in it. Cast forth
the soul in prayer, you meet the effluence of the outer truth, you
join with the creative elements giving breath