t was the Professor who made me sure of those things. I met him at
the "Priory," where my old friend carries on his controversy with the
Pope--or used to. In that house of his one meets all sorts of
visionaries from the ends of the earth. A Waldensian pastor full of
the dream of a rejuvenated Italy; a leader of French Protestants, who
has forgotten his controversy with the Pope in the great upheaval
through which his race are finding their soul once more; a dreamer from
across the Atlantic, his eyes a-gleam with the vision of a reunited
Christendom--these are the men you will find drinking tea at the Priory
on any day in our parish.

The original bond between them was their controversy with Rome, but
they have now forgotten all about that. There, in a happy hour, I met
the Professor. One phrase of his lit up for me the days of darkness.
"We see the alchemy of Providence at work all round about us," he
exclaimed, pushing his fingers through his hair until it stood up all
on end, an aureole of white.

"It is the flower of our manhood that is perishing," said the "Prior,"
while our hostess was nervously solicitous over the fate of a teacup
which the Professor was balancing in his left hand, utterly regardless
of its purpose.

"Perishing!" exclaimed the Professor; "they are not perishing--they are
living. To talk of the wastage of life is mere cant." Our hostess
rescued the teacup, and the Professor had now the free use of both his
hands. The one hand clutched his hair and the other made sundry
gestures clinching his arguments.

"Why should we rail at death?" said he; "for death has been the saviour
of humanity. It was death that made men of us. It was in the school
of death that man learned unselfishness, self-sacrifice, chivalry and
honour. There is nothing so ugly as the man whose heart is filled by
the world. It is death that has saved us all from that. Were man's
location here for ever, the world would be his god. A world without
death would be a world with no room for the Cross. Men climbed the
heights of nobility as they defied death. The crackling flames were
unable to silence the martyrs' song; the march of the hosts of
devouring tyranny could not move the hearts that chose death rather
than slavery; the generations sealed with their blood their testimony
that truth and loyalty to truth are more precious than life, and so met
death with a smile; it was through this wrestling with death that grea