“How amazed you look!” he observed, half playfully,—­“Religion must be at a very low ebb, if in a so-called Christian country you are surprised to hear a man openly acknowledge himself a disciple of the Christian creed!”

There was a brief pause, during which the chiming clock rang out the hour musically on the stillness.  Then Villiers, still in a state of most profound bewilderment, sat down deliberately in a chair opposite Alwyn’s, and placed one hand familiarly on his knee.

“Look here, old fellow,” he said impressively, “do you really mean it! ...  Are you ‘going over’ to some Church or other?”

Alwyn laughed—­his friend’s anxiety was so genuine.

“Not I!”—­he responded promptly..  “Don’t be alarmed, Villiers,—­I am not a ‘convert’ to any particular set form of faith,—­what I care for is the faith itself.  One can follow and serve Christ without any church dogma.  He has Himself told us plainly, in words simple enough for a child to understand, what He would have us to do, . . and though I, like many others, must regret the absence of a true Universal Church where the servants of Christ may meet altogether without a shadow of difference in opinion, and worship Him as He should be worshipped, still that is no reason why I should refrain from endeavoring to fulfil, as far as in me lies, my personal duty toward Him.  The fact is, Christianity has never yet been rightly taught, grasped or comprehended,—­moreover, as long as men seek through it their own worldly advantage, it never will be,—­so that the majority of the people are really as yet ignorant of its true spiritual meaning, thanks to the quarrels and differences of sects and preachers.  But, notwithstanding the unhappy position of religion at the present day, I repeat, I am a Christian, if love for Christ, and implicit belief in Him, can make me so.”

He spoke simply, and without the slightest affectation of reserve.  Villiers was still puzzled.

“I thought, Alwyn,” he ventured to say presently with some little diffidence,—­“that you entirely rejected the idea of Christ’s Divinity, as a mere superstition?”

“In dense ignorance of the extent of God’s possibilities, I certainly did so,” returned Alwyn quietly,—­“But I have had good reason to see that my own inability to comprehend supernatural causes was entirely to blame for that rejection.  Are we able to explain all the numerous and complex variations and manifestations of Matter?  No.  Then why do we dare to doubt the certainly conceivable variations and manifestations of Spirit? ...  The doctrine of a purely human Christ is untenable,—­a Creed founded on that idea alone would make no way with the immortal aspirations of the soul, . . what link could there be between a mere man like ourselves and heaven?  None whatever,—­it needs the divine in Christ to overleap the darkness of the grave, . . to serve us as the Symbol of certain