ulous thing in all the story of mankind, stands unrecorded save by
the pens of those who were themselves under the spell of it. In
subsequent marvels and wonder-workings?--he shook his head mournfully.
If any such there had been, those impartial witnesses who must have
known and should have spoken were silent, and now all the earth was
silent: storms rose in their fury and were calmed for no man's _Peace,
be still_; earthquakes engulfed pagan and Christian believer alike; all
nature was cruel, relentless, mechanical.

Was there nothing then to reach down the ages from that Christmas
morning so long ago to make the beautiful first-century myth a
latter-day reality? Tom cast about him hopelessly. There was the
Church--one and indivisible, if the myth were true. The slow Gordon
smile gathered at the corners of his eyes. He remembered a thing his
mother had said to him long ago, when, in a moment of boyish confidence,
he had told her of the climb to Crestcliffe Inn and its purpose.
"Ardea's a dear girl, as the children of this world go, Thomas; she's
been right loving and kind to me since we've come to be such close
neighbors. But"--with a note of solemn warning in her voice--"you must
never forget that she's an Episcopalian, a lost soul, dead in forms and
ceremonies and trespasses and sins." So his mother scoffed at Ardea's
faith; and Ardea--no, she did not scoff, her contempt was too generous
for that; but it was there, just the same. And the Methodists
fellowshiped neither, and the Baptists excluded the Methodists, and the
Catholics retorted to the Protestant charge of apostasy with the
centuries-old cry of "heretics all"! Which of the scores of divisions
and subdivisions was the one true indivisible body of Christ? Tom shook
his head again. There was no hope of proof in the churches.

And the world? He was only now verging on manhood, and he had seen
little of the world. But that little was frankly indifferent to the
things which, if they were worthy of belief, should shake an unsaved
world to its very foundations. Its people bought and sold, built houses
and laid up stores of the things that perish, grasped, overreached, did
what they listed. But for that matter, even those who professed to be
followers of the Christ, who asserted most loudly their belief in the
unproved things, fought and struggled and sinned in common with the
worldlings, as far as Tom could see.

He turned from the window and from the vision, and