He paused till the murmur of enthusiasm at mention of the name by which he was known through France should have ceased.  It rose on the air in a sort of bee-like humming monotone, and then died away, while many people stood on tip-toe and craned their necks eagerly over each other’s shoulders to catch a glimpse of the daring writer whose works threatened to upset a greater power than any throne, the Roman Church.

“I have tried,” he resumed quietly, “as I say, to proclaim the thoughts of many!  The people of France, like the peoples of many other nations, are losing God in a cloud of priest-craft.  Look up to this broad canopy of heaven,—­look up to yonder driving clouds heavy with rain, through which the great sun gleams like a golden shield,- -that is the temple of the real God!  That sparkling roof of air through which the planets roll in their tremendous orbits, bends over the wise and the foolish, the just and the unjust; the sun shines as kindly on the face of the street outcast as on that of the great lady who is often more soiled in soul than her miserable sister.  The rich man can provide for himself no finer quality of light than is vouchsafed to the poor.  The flowers in the field spring up as graciously under the feet of the beggar as the king.  The Church of the true God is Equality!—­the altar, the sacrament, the final resting-place of the dead, Equality!  Your revolutionary cry was and is still,—­Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity!—­but when you shout those words, you know not what you are calling for.  Your demand is instinctive,—­the cry of a child for its parents.  It is not for temporal things that you clamouras the foolish imagine,—­it is for eternal things!  Liberty of thought,—­Equality in work—­ Fraternity in faith!  But your political leaders, ever at work for themselves, misread these words for you, even as your priests misread Christ’s Gospel.  They make out for you that you want Liberty of action—­Equality of riches, Fraternity in position.  These things are by Nature’s law, impossible.  They are not wanted,—­and reasonable consideration will prove to you that you do not want them,—­otherwise you would be asking for a disordered universe, a chaos instead of a world!  The strong must always prevail,—­but by strong, I do not mean the strong liar or the strong evil-doer.  No!  For a lie contains in itself the germ of rottenness which shall kill—­and the evil-doer is not strong but weak, because cowardly.  There is no strength in fear; no power in disease!  Hence I repeat again, the strong must prevail—­and by the strong, I mean the Good!  Evil is always weak,—­it flourishes for a day, a month, a year, or if you will, a thousand years, for a thousand years are but a moment in the sight of Heaven; but for ever and ever justice is done,—­for ever and ever Right comes uppermost, and the Strong which is God, than whom is none stronger, and who is all Goodness—­prevails!  Liberty of thought should be the privilege of every human creature,