n to busy themselves with the sublime tragedy of
Calvary. I mused, playing softly all the while, on the wonderful,
blameless, glorious life that had ended in the shame and cruelty of the
Cross, when suddenly, like a cloud swooping darkly across the heaven of
my thoughts, came the suggestive question: "Is it all true? Was Christ
indeed Divine--or is it all a myth, a fable--an imposture?"
Unconsciously I struck a discordant chord on the organ--a faint tremor
shook me, and I ceased playing. An uncomfortable sensation came over
me, as of some invisible presence being near me and approaching softly,
slowly, yet always more closely; and I hurriedly rose from my seat,
shut the organ, and prepared to leave the chapel, overcome by a strange
incomprehensible terror. I was glad when I found myself safely outside
the door, and I rushed into the hall as though I were being pursued;
yet the oddest part of my feeling was, that whoever thus pursued me,
did so out of love, not enmity, and that I was almost wrong in running
away. I leaned for a moment against one of the columns in the hall,
trying to calm the excited beating of my heart, when a deep voice
startled me:

"So! you are agitated and alarmed! Unbelief is easily scared!"

I looked up and met the calm eyes of Heliobas. He appeared to be
taller, statelier, more like a Chaldean prophet or king than I had ever
seen him before. There was something in his steady scrutiny of my face
that put me to a sort of shame, and when he spoke again it was in a
tone of mild reproof.

"You have been led astray, my child, by the conflicting and vain
opinions of mankind. You, like many others in the world, delight to
question, to speculate, to weigh this, to measure that, with little or
no profit to yourself or your fellow-creatures. And you have come
freshly from a land where, in the great Senate-house, a poor perishable
lump of clay calling itself a man, dares to stand up boldly and deny
the existence of God, while his compeers, less bold than he, pretend a
holy displeasure, yet secretly support him--all blind worms denying the
existence of the sun; a land where so-called Religion is split into
hundreds of cold and narrow sects, gatherings assembled for the
practice of hypocrisy, lip-service and lies--where Self, not the
Creator, is the prime object of worship; a land, mighty once among the
mightiest, but which now, like an over-ripe pear, hangs loosely on its
tree, awaiting but a touch to make