of proclaiming Christianity in terms of an ancient science and theology which awaken no quickening response in the minds and hearts of to-day?  That!” The librarian thrust a yellow hand towards the pile of books.  “The new wine has burst the old skin and is running all over the world.  Ah, my friend, if you could only see, as I do, the yearning for a satisfying religion which exists in this big city!  It is like a vacuum, and those books are rushing to supply it.  I little thought,” he added dreamily, “when I renounced the ministry in so much sorrow that one day I should have a church of my own.  This library is my church, and men and women of all creeds come here by the thousands.  But you must pardon me.  I have been carried away—­I forgot myself.”

“Mr. Engel,” replied the rector, “I want you to regard me as one of your parishioners.”

The librarian looked at him mutely, and the practical, desiccated little person seemed startlingly transformed into a mediaeval, German mystic.

“You are a great man, Mr. Hodder,” he said.  “I might have guessed it.”

It was one of the moments when protest would have been trite, superfluous.  And Hodder, in truth, felt something great swelling within him, something that was not himself, and yet strangely was.  But just what—­in view of his past strict orthodoxy and limited congregation —­Mr. Engel meant, he could not have said.  Had the librarian recognized, without confession on his part, the change in him? divined his future intentions?

“It is curious that I should have met you this morning, Mr. Engel,” he said.  “I expressed surprise when you declared this was a religious age, because you corroborated something I had felt, but of which I had no sufficient proof.  I felt that a great body of unsatisfied men and women existed, but that I was powerless to get in touch with them; I had discovered that truth, as you have so ably pointed out, is disguised and distorted by ancient dogmas; and that the old Authority, as you say, no longer carries weight.”

“Have you found the new one?” Mr. Engel demanded.

“I think I have,” the rector answered calmly, “it lies in personality.  I do not know whether you will agree with me that the Church at large has a future, and I will confess to you that there was a time when I thought she had not.  I see now that she has, once given to her ministers that freedom to develop of which you speak.  In spite of the fact that truth has gradually been revealed to the world by what may be called an Apostolic Succession of Personalities,—­Augustine, Dante, Francis of Assisi, Luther, Shakespeare, Milton, and our own Lincoln and Phillips Brooks,—­to mention only a few,—­the Church as a whole has been blind to it.  She has insisted upon putting the individual in a straitjacket, she has never recognized that growth is the secret of life, that the clothes of one man are binding on another.”

“Ah, you are right—­a thousand times right,” cried the librarian.  “You have read Royce, perhaps, when he says, ’This mortal shall put on individuality—­’”