“Recognize that now we have bare life; at best for the bulk of men the Saurian lizard’s broad back soaking and roasting in primeval slime; or say, in the so-called teachers of men, as much of life as pricks the frog in March to stir and yawn, and up on a flaccid leap that rolls him over some three inches nearer to the ditchwater besought by his instinct.”

‘I ask you, did you ever hear?  The flaccid frog!  But on we go.’

’"Professors, prophets, masters, each hitherto has had his creed and system to offer, good mayhap for the term; and each has put it forth for the truth everlasting, to drive the dagger to the heart of time, and put the axe to human growth!—­that one circle of wisdom issuing of the experience and needs of their day, should act the despot over all other circles for ever!—­so where at first light shone to light the yawning frog to his wet ditch, there, with the necessitated revolution of men’s minds in the course of ages, darkness radiates.”

’That’s old Nevil.  Upon my honour, I haven’t a notion of what it all means, and I don’t believe the old rascal Shrapnel has himself.  And pray be patient, my dear colonel.  You will find him practical presently.  I’ll skip, if you tell me to.  Darkness radiates, does it!

’"The creed that rose in heaven sets below; and where we had an angel we have claw-feet and fangs.  Ask how that is!  The creed is much what it was when the followers diverged it from the Founder.  But humanity is not where it was when that creed was food and guidance.  Creeds will not die not fighting.  We cannot root them up out of us without blood.”

‘He threatens blood!—­’

’"Ours, my Beauchamp, is the belief that humanity advances beyond the limits of creeds, is to be tied to none.  We reverence the Master in his teachings; we behold the limits of him in his creed—­ and that is not his work.  We truly are his disciples, who see how far it was in him to do service; not they that made of his creed a strait-jacket for humanity.  So, in our prayers we dedicate the world to God, not calling him great for a title, no—­showing him we know him great in a limitless world, lord of a truth we tend to, have not grasped.  I say Prayer is good.  I counsel it to you again and again:  in joy, in sickness of heart.  The infidel will not pray; the creed-slave prays to the image in his box."’

‘I’ve had enough!’ Colonel Halkett ejaculated.

‘"We,"’ Captain Baskelett put out his hand for silence with an ineffable look of entreaty, for here was Shrapnel’s hypocrisy in full bloom: