nse of
the immediate presence of God. He floated in that realization. He
was not so much thinking now as conversing starkly with the divine
interlocutor, who penetrated all things and saw into and illuminated
every recess of his mind. He spread out his ideas to the test of this
presence; he brought out his hazards and interpretations that this light
might judge them.

There came back to his mind the substance of his two former visions;
they assumed now a reciprocal quality, they explained one another and
the riddle before him. The first had shown him the personal human aspect
of God, he had seen God as the unifying captain calling for his personal
service, the second had set the stage for that service in the spectacle
of mankind's adventure. He had been shown a great multitude of human
spirits reaching up at countless points towards the conception of the
racial unity under a divine leadership, he had seen mankind on the
verge of awakening to the kingdom of God. "That solves no mystery,"
he whispered, gripping the seat and frowning at the water; "mysteries
remain mysteries; but that is the reality of religion. And now, now,
what is my place? What have I to do? That is the question I have been
asking always; the question that this moment now will answer; what have
I to do?..."

God was coming into the life of all mankind in the likeness of a captain
and a king; all the governments of men, all the leagues of men, their
debts and claims and possessions, must give way to the world republic
under God the king. For five troubled years he had been staring religion
in the face, and now he saw that it must mean this--or be no more than
fetishism, Obi, Orphic mysteries or ceremonies of Demeter, a legacy
of mental dirtiness, a residue of self-mutilation and superstitious
sacrifices from the cunning, fear-haunted, ape-dog phase of human
development. But it did mean this. And every one who apprehended as much
was called by that very apprehension to the service of God's kingdom.
To live and serve God's kingdom on earth, to help to bring it about, to
propagate the idea of it, to establish the method of it, to incorporate
all that one made and all that one did into its growing reality, was the
only possible life that could be lived, once that God was known.

He sat with his hands gripping his knees, as if he were holding on to
his idea. "And now for my part," he whispered, brows knit, "now for my
part."

Ever since he had given his