my dear Canon, of dealing with a most improper
question. The dear lady seems to think that we are not capable of
reading our Bibles for ourselves."

After that the chairman put to the meeting the resolution of protest to
the effect that if the Reverend Vane Maxwell persisted in carrying out
his intention to proceed from a pulpit of the church to the platform of
an infidel lecture hall, he would make it the painful duty of his
canonical superiors to take his conduct into most serious consideration,
and, further, should he persist in this deplorable resolution, he would
arouse the gravest suspicions in the minds of all loyal churchmen as to
his fitness for dispensing the sacred functions of his office.

The Kilburn Sister and a few others walked out amidst a chilling
silence, and under a silent fire of glances which ought to have made
them feel very uncomfortable. Perhaps it did.

The resolution was put and passed without a dissentient voice, and when
the proceedings were over and Lady Canore, who had been one of the most
energetic organisers of the meeting, got back into her carriage, she
said to her husband:

"I think the dear Canon's reply was most dignified and proper. That
woman ought to be ashamed of herself--and a Kilburn Sister, too! Donald,
I shall certainly go and hear what this Mr. Maxwell has to say to
these--ah--these people at, where is it? the Hall of what? Oh, yes!
Science, and you must manage to get a seat. I believe you pay for them
just as you do in a theatre. It is, of course, very shocking, but I
think it will be most interesting."

A good many other members of the audience said practically the same
thing in other ways, and so it came about that the Hall in Old Street
was packed as it had not been since the most famous days of Charles
Bradlaugh, and packed, too, with a most strangely assorted audience of
democrats and aristocrats, socialists and landowners, freethinkers of
the deistic, the atheistic, and the agnostic persuasions, and Christians
of even more varying shades of opinion, from the most rigidly
Calvinistic evangelical, to the most artistically emotional of the High
Anglican cult.

The President rose amidst the usual applause, but it hushed the moment
he began to speak, in clear incisive tones which sent every syllable
distinctly from end to end of the hall:

"Friends, I intend to say very little, because we are going to hear
to-night what we very seldom hear in a secular lecture-hal