He recalled, in his musings, the little theological school surrounded by southern woods and fields, where he had sometime walked under autumn foliage with the elderly gentleman who had had such an influence on his life—­the dean.  Mild-mannered and frail, patient in ordinary converse, —­a lion for the faith.  He would have died for it as cheerfully as any martyr in history.  By the marvels of that faith Holder had beheld, from his pew in the chapel, the little man transformed.  He knew young men, their perplexities and temptations, and he dealt with them personally, like a father.  Holder’s doubts were stilled, he had gained power of his temptations and peace for his soul, and he had gone forth inspired by the reminder that there was no student of whom the dean expected better things.  Where now were the thousands of which he had dreamed, and which he was to have brought into the Church? . . .

Now, he asked himself, was it the dean, or the dean’s theology through which his regeneration had come?  Might not the inherent goodness of the dean be one thing, and his theology quite another?  Personality again!  He recalled one of the many things which Alison Parr had branded on his memory,—­“the belief, the authority in which the man is clothed, and not the man!” The dean’s God had remained silent on the subject of personality.  Or, at the best, he had not encouraged it; and there were —­Hodder could not but perceive—­certain contradictions in his character, which were an anomalistic blending of that of the jealous God of Moses and of the God of Christ.  There must be continuity—­God could not change.  Therefore the God of infinite love must retain the wrath which visited sins of the fathers on the children, which demanded sacrifice, atonement,—­an exact propitiation for his anger against mankind.  An innocent life of sorrow and suffering!

And again, “You and your religion are as far apart as the poles!” Had he, Hodder, outgrown the dean’s religion, or had it ever been his own?  Was there, after all, such a thing as religion?  Might it not be merely a figment of the fertile imagination of man?  He did not escape the terror of this thought when he paused to consider his labour of the past two years and the vanity of its results.  And little by little the feeling grew upon him, such being the state of his mind, that he ought not to continue, for the present at least, to conduct the services.  Should he resign, or go away for a while to some quiet place before he made such a momentous decision?  There was no one to whom he could turn; no layman, and no clergyman; not even the old bishop, whom he had more than once mentally accused of being, too broad and too tolerant!  No, he did not wish a clergyman’s solution.  The significance of this thought flashed through him—­that the world itself was no longer seeking clergymen’s solutions.  He must go off alone, and submit his faith to the impartial test.