d how ineffective our church was to make things better. That
struck me. There were religious disputes in the diocese too, and they
shook me. I thought my faith was built on a rock, and I found it was
built on sand. It was slipping and sliding long before the war. But the
war brought it down. Before the war such a lot of things in England and
Europe seemed like a comedy or a farce, a bad joke that one tolerated.
One tried half consciously, half avoiding the knowledge of what one was
doing, to keep one's own little circle and life civilized. The war shook
all those ideas of isolation, all that sort of evasion, down. The world
is the rightful kingdom of God; we had left its affairs to kings and
emperors and suchlike impostors, to priests and profit-seekers and
greedy men. We were genteel condoners. The war has ended that. It
thrusts into all our lives. It brings death so close--A fortnight ago
twenty-seven people were killed and injured within a mile of this by
Zeppelin bombs.... Every one loses some one.... Because through all that
time men like myself were going through our priestly mummeries, abasing
ourselves to kings and politicians, when we ought to have been crying
out: 'No! No! There is no righteousness in the world, there is no right
government, except it be the kingdom of God.'"

He paused and looked at them. They were all listening to him now. But he
was still haunted by a dread of preaching in his own family. He dropped
to the conversational note again.

"You see what I had in mind. I saw I must come out of this, and preach
the kingdom of God. That was my idea. I don't want to force it upon you,
but I want you to understand why I acted as I did. But let me come to
the particular thing that has happened to-day. I did not think when I
made my final decision to leave the church that it meant such poverty as
this we are living in--permanently. That is what I want to make clear to
you. I thought there would be a temporary dip into dinginess, but that
was all. There was a plan; at the time it seemed a right and reasonable
plan; for setting up a chapel in London, a very plain and simple
undenominational chapel, for the simple preaching of the world kingdom
of God. There was some one who seemed prepared to meet all the immediate
demands for such a chapel."

"Was it Lady Sunderbund?" asked Clementina.

Scrope was pulled up abruptly. "Yes," he said. "It seemed at first a
quite hopeful project."

"We'd have hated tha