ng he
may be, as beautiful is rather to ridicule him than otherwise, but when
such a man as Vane passes through such an ordeal as his had been, the
word beauty may be justly used in the sense in which the feminine
portion of the congregation of St. Chrysostom's unanimously used it that
morning.

There was a hush of expectation as he opened a small Bible lying on the
desk in front of him. Then he raised his right hand and made the sign of
the Cross.

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,
Amen!"

The words were not hastily and inaudibly muttered as they too often are
by the clergy of the High Anglican persuasion. They rang out as clearly
as the notes of a bell through the silence of the crowded church, and
the congregation recognised instantly that he possessed, at least, the
first qualification of a great preacher.

Then he took up his Bible, and said in a quite ordinary conversational
tone:

"It will be well if those who wish to follow what I am about to say will
take their Bibles and turn to the fifth chapter of the Gospel according
to St. Matthew."

The opening was as unpromising as it was unconventional, but more than
half the congregation obeyed, and when the rustling of leaves had
subsided, he began to read the Sermon on the Mount.

When the first thrill of astonishment had passed, it was noticed that,
after the first few verses, he ceased to look at the Bible. Every member
of the congregation had heard the words over and over again, but they
had never heard them as they heard them now. It was nothing like the
formal reading of the lessons to which they had been accustomed, and as
the clear, pure tones of his voice rang through the church, and, as his
eyes and face lighted up with the radiance of an almost divine
enthusiasm, there were some in his audience who began to think that he
might well have been a re-incarnation of one of those disciples of the
Master who heard the words as they came from His lips that day on the
Judean hillside.

He went on verse after verse, never missing a word, and unconsciously
emphasising each passage with gestures, slight in themselves, but
eloquent and forcible in their exact suitability to the words, and very
soon every man and woman in the church was listening to him, not only
with rapt attention, but with a growing feeling of uneasiness and
apprehension as to what was to follow.

At length he came to the twenty-third verse of the