rsal church will open its doors to all the
world--and, mark my words, Conrad, all the world will enter in. I may
not live to see the day. My span of life has not long to run--but that
day will come."

"No doubt," replied Captain Winstanley gravely. "There is a
slovenliness, so to speak, about the present arrangement of things, and
a great deal of useless expense; every small town with its half-a-dozen
churches and chapels of different denominations--Episcopalians,
Wesleyans, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Primitive Methodists. Now on your
plan one large building would do for all, like the town hall, or the
general post office. There would be a wonderful economy."

"I fear you contemplate the question from an entirely temporal point of
view," said Miss Skipwith, flattered but yet reproachful. "It is its
spiritual aspect that is grandest."

"Naturally. But a man of the world is apt to consider the
practicability of a scheme. And yours seems to me eminently practical.
If you can only get the Mohamedans and the Brahmins to come in! The
Roman Catholics might of course be easily won, though it would involve
doing away with the Pope. There was a prophecy, by-the-way, that after
the ninth Pius there would be only eleven more Popes. No doubt that
prophecy pointed at your universal religion. But I fear you may have
some difficulty about the Buddhists. I fancy they are rather a bigoted
sect."

"The greatest bigots have but to be convinced," said Miss Skipwith.
"St. Paul was a bigot."

"True. Is your book nearly finished?"

"No. There are still some years of labour before me. I am now working
at the Swedenborgian portion, striving to demonstrate how that great
man's scheme of religion, though commonly supposed to be a new and
original emanation of one mind, is in reality a reproduction of
spiritual views involved in other and older religions. The Buddhists
were Swedenborgians without knowing it, just as Swedenborg
unconsciously was a Buddhist."

"I begin to understand. The process which you are engaged in is a kind
of spiritual chemistry, in which you resolve each particular faith into
its primary elements: with a view to prove that those elements are
actually the same in all creeds; and that the differences which
heretofore have kept mankind apart are mere divergencies of detail."

"That, crudely and imperfectly stated, is my aim," replied Miss
Skipwith graciously.

This kind of conversation continued all through dinner. M