spectable British
citizen, especially those, who, in any way, resembled the young man who
came to Christ and asked Him what he should do to be saved. It was, in
short, a case of becoming comparative paupers, and only having the bare
necessaries of life, or keeping what they had, and saying honestly to
themselves, the world, and God:

"I can't be a Christian at that price, and so, instead of remaining a
Christian humbug, I will be an honest atheist."

A very terrible dilemma, certainly, and yet, if the Gospels were true,
and if the Son of God had really preached the Sermon on the Mount, it
was one from which there was no escape but this. It was a plain matter
of belief or disbelief, honesty or dishonesty, and, if they believed in
God, dishonesty was impossible, save under the penalty of eternal
damnation.

CHAPTER XVIII.

That day the clergy-house of St. Chrysostom was, of course, deluged with
newspapers and cuttings, and the flood continued for two or three days,
during which Vane, unconscious or careless of the fact that he was
already the clerical lion of London, and, perhaps, the most discussed
man for the time being in England and the sister kingdoms, was working
hard helping his friend, Ernshaw, to organize an entirely unsectarian
twentieth century crusade throughout the poorer districts of London. He
seldom read newspapers, for he preferred the living fact to the written
word, and, besides, such work as his left little time for reading. He
had seen his name on the placards of the morning and evening papers, and
he had bought some which he had not found time to do more than glance
over.

He was, of course, glad that his sermon had attracted so much attention,
but he knew enough of newspapers and their readers not to hope for too
much on this account, and so he was not a little surprised when Father
Baldwin said to him on his return to the clergy-house on the Friday
evening:

"Well, Maxwell! glad to see you back, although you have brought a nice
hornet's nest about our ears, and started something like a social and
religious earthquake in Kensington and the adjacent lands of Mayfair and
Belgravia, to say nothing of a distinct fluttering in what I may,
perhaps, without irreverence call the upper and more spacious dove-cotes
of the Church."

"Have I really?" said Vane, quietly, "I didn't know I had, but if I have
done so, I am very glad. It was exactly what I intended to do, though I
confess I had lit