He will see His doctrines mocked at and denounced as futile.  Few men there are in these days who would deny themselves for His sake, or sacrifice a personal passion for the purer honouring of His name.  Inasmuch as the pride of great learning breeds arrogance, so the more the wonder of God’s work is displayed to us, the more are we dazzled and confounded; and so in our blindness we turn from the worship of the Creator to that of His creation, forgetting that all the visible universe is but the outcome or expression of the hidden Divine Intelligence behind it.  What of the marvels of the age!—­the results of science!—­the strange psychic prescience and knowledge of things more miraculous yet to be!—­these are but hints and warnings of the approach of God himself—­’coming in a cloud with power and great glory’!”

As he thus spoke, he raised his hand out of old habit acquired in preaching, and a ray from the after-glow of the sunken sun lit up the jewel in the apostolic ring he wore, warming its pale green lustre to a dim violet spark as of living fire.  His fine features were for a moment warm with fervour and feeling,—­then,—­suddenly, he thought of the great world outside all creeds,—­of the millions and millions of human beings who neither know nor accept Christ,—­of the Oriental races with their intricate and beautiful systems of philosophy,—­of savage tribes, conquered and unconquered,—­of fierce yet brave Turkish warriors who are, with all their faults, at any rate true to the faith they profess—­and lastly—­more than all—­of the thousands upon thousands of Christians in Christian lands, who no more believe in Him whose holy name they take in vain, than in any Mumbo-Jumbo fetish of untaught barbarians.  Were these to perish utterly?  Had they no immortal souls to save?  Had the churches been at work for eighteen hundred years and more, to bring about no better results than this,—­namely that there were only “A few names in Sardis”?  If so, were not the churches criminally to blame?  Yea, even holy Mother-Church, whose foundation rested on the memory of the Lying Apostle?  Rapidly, and as if suggested by some tormenting devil, these thoughts possessed the Cardinal’s brain, burning into it and teasing and agonising the tender fibres of his conscience and his soul.  Could God, the great loving Creator of countless universes, be so cruel as to wantonly destroy millions of helpless creatures in one small planet, because through ignorance or want of proper teaching they had failed to find Christ?—­was it possible that he could only extend his mercy and forgiveness to the “few names in Sardis”?

“Yet our world is but a pin’s point in the eternal immensities,” argued the Cardinal almost wistfully—­“Only a few can expect to be saved.”