ld and would change its standards of honesty and morality, the force
of public opinion would soon make crime impossible, save among the
mentally and morally diseased, who would, of course, be treated in the
same merciful but relentless fashion as we now treat what we call our
criminal lunatics.

"It will of course be quite impossible for me to treat this vast subject
in anything like detail in a single address, and therefore I shall
content myself with having thrown out these few suggestions, and leave
the development of it to those who will, I hope, take part in the
discussion.

"But one word more in conclusion. Your President has called me a
missionary, a missionary to the rich. That is the mission which I have
taken on myself, and therefore I gladly accept the title, all the more
gladly because it comes from one who, while he differs from me
absolutely on every theological point which I believe essential to
salvation, has proved his faith by giving me that title and by uttering
a prayer which has, I hope, already been heard by Him to whom all hearts
are open, and from whom no secrets are hid."

When Vane sat down there burst out a storm of applause, through which
not a few hisses, mostly from clerical lips, pierced shrilly. Yet, few
and simple as his words had been, it was quite evident that they had
gone straight to the hearts of the majority of his audience.

The President rose when the applause subsided, and, after a brief
speech, in which he frankly admitted that if all teachers of the
Christian faith were like Vane Maxwell, and if there were no other sort
of Christianity than his, there would be very little of what too many
Christians call infidelity in the world, gave the usual notice that the
meeting was now open for discussion.

Then the storm burst over Vane's devoted head. By a sort of tacit
agreement the Secularists left the attack to the clergy. As a matter of
fact they had practically no cause for dispute with Vane. On the
contrary they delighted in the frankness of his expression of his
belief, and the uncompromising fashion in which he had denounced and
repudiated that unchristian form of Christianity which, as the President
had put it, was responsible through its hypocrisy and double-dealing
with God and man for all the honest unbelief, and all the scoffing and
scepticism, which it pretended to deplore. So the Secularists sat still
and silent, enjoying hugely the series of bitter attacks that wer