ciety established for the purpose, prepared to build a great church
upon a site adjoining the Strand, to be called the New Temple. A
definite schism thereupon was created, and so insistent became the
demand for more light, for a personal message, that Paul was urged by a
committee, including some of the foremost thinkers of the day, to
deliver a series of addresses at the Albert Hall. He had lighted a
veritable bonfire, and its flames were spreading to the four points of
the compass. Even Islam, that fanatic rock against which reform dashes
itself in vain, was stirred at last, and the Sherif of Mecca issued a
_firman_ to the mosques within his province authorising an intensive
campaign against the _Koran Inglisi_--for Paul had embraced the tenets
of the Moslem faith within his new Catholic creed.

At one of his clubs, which he visited rarely, he met one evening a
bishop famed as a religious educationalist, a large red cleric having
bristling eyebrows resembling shrimps and the calculating glance of a
judge of good port. This astute man of the world attacked him along
peculiar lines. "There must always be a hierarchy, Mr. Mario," he said.
"Buddha--if such a personage ever existed--endeavoured to dispense with
a priesthood and a ritual, but his followers have been unable to do so.
You aver that the Kingdom of God is within ourselves, but if every man
were able to find the Kingdom of God within himself he would have no
occasion to pay others to find it for him. What would become of the poor
churchman?"

"I have not proposed the abolition of the old priesthood," Paul replied.
"I have proposed the establishment of a new. Only by appreciation of the
fact that Man is the supreme Mystery can man solve the Riddle of the
Universe, and what is there of mystery about your tennis-playing curate?
The gossiper whom we have seen nibbling buttered scones at five o'clock
tea mounts the pulpit and addresses us upon the subject of the Holy
Trinity. On this subject naturally he has nothing to tell us, and
naturally we are bored. Rather than abolish ritual I would embellish it,
calling to my aid all the resources of art and music. I would invest my
ritual with awe and majesty, and my priests should be a class apart."

"Such an appeal is not for every man, Mr. Mario. Your New Temple would
be designed to inculcate the truth upon minds which have already
received it; a thankless task. We seek the good of the greatest number,
and you must brin