l. We are
going to hear an address which you are waiting for as eagerly as I am,
an address delivered by a man who, as a Priest of the Church of England,
last Sunday sent a thrill of astonishment, of amazement, I might almost
say of horror, through Christian England."

A burst of applause, coming chiefly from the back of the hall,
interrupted the speaker, but he put his hand up, and went on:

"No, please! I must ask you not to applaud. For one thing, there is not
time for it. Just let me get my say said, and then, when Mr. Maxwell
gives us the message he has brought us from what we are, perhaps, too
ready to believe the enemy's camp, applaud him as much as you like. What
I want to do now is to say as far as possible without offence, and
without hurting the feelings of the many members of Christian churches
who have come amongst us to-night, that it is to be our privilege to
listen here in what has been recently called the head-quarters of
infidelity--an insulting epithet which I, with you and all true
rationalists indignantly repudiate--a man, a Christian clergyman, a
priest of the Church of England who has, as you already know, raised a
hurricane of criticism throughout this Christian country by daring to
tell Christians just what Jesus of Nazareth meant--if plain words mean
anything--when he preached the Sermon on the Mount. He has dared to say
from a Christian pulpit what we have been saying from these platforms of
ours ever since we had them--that Christendom is not Christian, and that
it cannot be so until it is prepared to be honest with itself and its
God.

"Mr. Maxwell has come amongst us to-night with other thoughts, other
faiths, other beliefs than ours, but from what I see of the audience he
will not speak to freethinkers only. I believe that there are more
professing Christians in this hall to-night than there ever have been
before. Let us remember that. It may be that Mr. Maxwell will teach us
some lessons as unpalatable as those which he taught from the pulpit of
St. Chrysostom; but do not let us forget this that we shall be listening
to a man who is a missionary in the best sense of the word, a man who
has justified his faith by the sacrifice of his worldly prospects, and
who has taken upon himself a task infinitely more difficult, infinitely
more thankless than that of the missionary who, as we believe, carries
at an immense expense of money which could be better spent in the
charity that begins at ho