s father, who climbed slowly into his pulpit
and gave out the text of his sermon. To-day he would talk about the
sacrifice of Isaac. "Abraham, as his hearers would remember..." and so
on.

Jeremy listened, and gradually there grew before his eyes the figure of
a strange and terrible God. This was no new figure. He had never thought
directly about God, but for a very long time now he had had Him in the
background of his life as Polchester Town Hall was in the background.
But now he definitely and actively figured to himself this God, this God
Who was taking his mother away and was intending apparently to put
her into some dark place where she would know nobody. It must be some
horrible place, because his father looked so frightened, which he would
not look if his mother was simply going, with a golden harp, to sing
hymns. Jeremy had always heard that this God was loving and kind and
tender, but the figure whom his father was now drawing for the benefit
of the congregation was none of these things.

Mr. Cole spoke of a God just and terrible, but a God Who apparently
for the merest fancy put His faithful servant to terrible anguish and
distress, and then for another fancy, as light as the first, spared him
his sorrow. Mr. Cole emphasised the necessity for obedience, the need
for a willing surrender of anything that may be dear to us, "because the
love of God must be greater than anything that holds us here on earth."
But Jeremy did not listen to these remarks; his mind was filled with
this picture of a vast shadowy figure, seated in the sky, his white
beard flowing beneath eyes that frowned from dark rocky eyebrows
out upon people like Jeremy who, although doing their best, were
nevertheless at the mercy of any whim that He might have. This terrible
figure was the author of the hot day, author of the silent house and the
shimmering darkened church, author of the decision to take his mother
away from all that she loved and put her somewhere where she would be
alone and cold and silent--"simply because He wishes..."

"From this beautiful passage," concluded Mr. Cole, "we learn that God is
just and merciful, but that He demands our obedience. We must be ready
at any instant to give up what we love most and best...."

Afterwards they all trooped out into the splendid sunshine.

IV

There was a horrible Sunday dinner when--the silence and the roast
beef and Yorkshire pudding, and the dining-room quivering with hea