to feel himself more than one of a crowd;
not once was he permitted to rise above his mere atomship, nor feel that
he received more attention than the humblest worshipper in arrears for
pew-rent. Yet, though the young rector regarded Browett as but one of
many, he knew infallibly the instant that invisible wire was strung
between them, and felt, thereafter, every tug of opposition or signal of
agreement that flashed from Browett's mind, knowing in the end, without
a look, that he had won Browett's approval and even excited his
interest.

For the sermon had been strangely, wonderfully suited to Browett's
peculiar tastes. Hardly could a sermon have been better planned to win
him. The choice of the text itself: "And thou shalt take no gift: for
the gift blindeth the wise and perverteth the words of the righteous,"
was perfect art.

The plea was for intellectual honesty, for academic freedom, for
fearless independence, which were said to be the crowning glories in the
diadem of man's attributes. Fearlessly, then, did the speaker depreciate
both the dogmatism of religion and the dogmatism of science. "Much of
what we call religion," he said, "is only the superstition of the past;
much of what we call science is but the superstition of the present." He
pleaded that religion might be an ever-living growth in the human heart,
not a dead formulary of dogmatic origin. True, organisation was
necessary, but in the realm of spiritual essentials a creed drawn up in
the fourth century should not be treated as if it were the final
expression of the religious consciousness _in secula seculorum_. One
should, indeed, be prepared for the perpetual restatement of religious
truth, fearlessly submitting the most cherished convictions to the light
of each succeeding age.

Yet, especially, should it not be forgotten in an age of
ultra-physicism, of social and economic heterodoxies, that there must
ever be in human society, according to the blessed ordinance of God,
princes and subjects, masters and proletariat, rich and poor, learned
and ignorant, nobles and plebeians--yet all united in the bonds of love
to help one another attain their moral welfare on earth and their last
end in heaven;--all united in the bonds of fraternal good-will,
independent yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence.

He closed with these words of Voltaire: "We must love our country
whatever injustice we suffer in it, as we must love and serve the
Supreme Be