y about the cult of Christ being irreconcilable with the tasks and
responsibilities of "modern" life, but simply to do their best,
whatever their occupation, to become a personality after Christ's
example.

This is a sound and just statement of Christian faith, and it is
quoted here to justify the view that the Emperor's soldiers and his
Dreadnoughts, his mailed fist and shining armour, are built and put on
in the spirit of precaution and defence. The attitude, it cannot of
course be denied, is based on the un-Christlike assumption that all
men (and particularly all peoples and their governments and
diplomatists) are liars; but in his favour it may be urged that for
that saying the Emperor could cite Biblical authority. And yet there
is an inconsistency; for the saying is that of one of those same wise
men whose words, the Emperor admits, are transitory and mortal.

It is possible that the Emperor had a presentiment of some kind that
his life was now in danger, and that the presentiment may have attuned
his thoughts to meditation on Christ's life and teaching; for it is a
fact, well worthy of remark, that in the fear of death man's one and
only relief and consolation is the knowledge that there was, and is, a
mediator for him with his Creator. The address at his sons'
confirmation was delivered on October 17th, and on Sunday morning,
November 8th all the world, it is hardly too much to say, was
astonished and pained to learn, by a publication in the _Official
Gazette_, that the Emperor the day before had had to submit to a
serious operation on his throat. The announcement spoke of a polypus,
or fungoid growth, which had had to be removed; but all over the world
the conclusion was come to that the mortal affliction of the father
had fallen on the son and that the Emperor was a doomed man. Most
providentially and happily it was nothing of the sort. On the 9th the
Emperor was out of bed and signing official papers, on the 15th he was
allowed to talk in whispers, and on the 17th it was declared by the
physicians that all danger was over and that no more bulletins would
be issued. On December 14th the Emperor received a congratulatory
visit from the President of the Reichstag, who reported to Parliament
his impression that "the Emperor had completely recovered his old
vigour (great applause) and that his voice was again clear and
strong."

The Emperor had passed through what one may suppose to have been the
darkest hour