t the
most vital interest of human life plainly, nay, uncompromisingly before
you; how far you can or will follow them in your daily lives is a matter
which rests between yourselves and your Redeemer."

The next morning nearly all the papers contained more or less lengthy
reports of a sermon of which half London was already talking. Ernest
Reed, a smart young reporter with strong freethought tendencies, who
made a Sunday speciality of reporting sermons of all sorts, especially
the extreme ones, and who wrote caustically impartial comments on them
in the rationalist papers, had instantly grasped the true significance
of such a sermon being preached to such a congregation, and, moreover,
he had himself been deeply affected by the solemn earnestness with which
the momentous words had been spoken.

"A Daniel come to judgment! A parson who believes in his own creed at
last!" was his mental comment, as he closed his note-book. "That chap's
worth following. I wonder where he is going to preach to-night. I'll
find out."

Of course he did find out and followed Vane to Bethnal Green, with the
result that he made what is professionally termed "a scoop," since he
was the only reporter who was able to give both sermons verbatim. The
_Daily Chronicle_ was the only morning paper smart enough to print them
word for word in parallel columns under the title:

WEIGHTY WORDS TO RICH AND POOR.
The Rev. Vane Maxwell
Asks Mayfair and Bethnal Green
If they are Christian?

The consequence was, that all London and a very considerable part of
England too, stared wonderingly over its breakfast table and asked
itself whether there was really anything in these plain, almost homely,
and yet terribly pregnant words. Certainly there was no getting away
from the pitiless logic of them. If Vane Maxwell was right, England was
_not_ a Christian country, save in name, and its citizens were
Christians only because they had been baptized into one or other of the
churches and so called themselves Christians by a sort of courtesy
title. For the moment at least, Christianity assumed a shape as tangible
and a meaning almost as serious as party politics. In other words Vane's
sermon, even when read in cold print, put the question: Are you really a
Christian? so plainly, so uncompromisingly, and so unavoidably to every
man or woman calling himself or herself a Christian, that hundreds of
thousands of people all over the country, to say no