He became for a time one of the “hands” in a huge Birmingham factory.  After that he worked for several months at the coal pits among the lowest of the men employed there.  Then he got a “job” in a dock-yard and studied the ways of shipping and humanity together.  During this time of self-imposed probation, he never failed to write letters home to Canada, saying he was “doing well” in England, but how this “doing well” was brought about he never explained.  And the actual motive and end of all his experiences was as yet a secret locked within his own heart.  Yet when it was put into words it sounded simple enough,- -it was merely to find out how much or how little the clergy, or so-called “servants of Christ”, obeyed their Master.  Did they comfort the comfortless?  Were they “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves”?  Were they long-suffering, slow to wrath, and forbearing one to the other?  Did they truly “feed the sheep”?  Did they sacrifice themselves, their feelings, and their ambitions to rescue what was lost?  All these and sundry other questions Aubrey Leigh set himself to answer,—­and by and by he found himself on an endless path of discovery, where at every step some new truth confronted him;—­some amazing hypocrisy burned itself in letters of flame against the splendour of church altars;—­some deed of darkness and bigotry and cruelty smirched the white robes of the “ordained to preach the Gospel”.  Gradually he became so intently and vitally interested in his investigations, and his sympathy for the uncomforted people who had somehow lost Christ instead of finding Him, grew so keen that he resolved to give up his entire life to the work of beginning to try and remedy the evil.  He had no independent means,—­he lived from hand to mouth earning just what he could by hard labour,—­till one day, when the forces in his own soul said “Ready!” he betook himself to one small room which he hired in a fisherman’s cottage on the coast of Cornwall, and there sat down to write a book.  Half the day he wrote, and half the day he earned his bread as a common fisherman, going out with the others in storm and shine, sailing through sleet and hail and snow, battling with the waves, and playing with Death at every turn of the rocks, which, like the teeth of great monsters, jagged the stormy shore.  And he grew strong, and lithe, and muscular—­his outward life of hard and changeful labour, accompanied by the inward life of intelligent and creative thought, gradually worked off all depression of soul and effeminacy of body,- -his experience of the stage passed away, leaving no trace on his mind but the art, the colour and the method,—­particularly the method of speech.  With art, colour, and method he used the pen;—­ with the same art, colour, and method he used his voice, and practised the powers of oratory.  He would walk for miles to any lonely place where he could be sure of no interruption,—­and there he would speak aloud to the roaring waves and wide stretches of desolate land, and tell them the