visions; they assumed now a reciprocal quality, they explained
one another and the riddle before him. The first had shown him

the personal human aspect of God, he had seen God as the unifying
captain calling for his personal service, the second had set the

stage for that service in the spectacle of mankind's adventure.
He had been shown a great multitude of human spirits reaching up

at countless points towards the conception of the racial unity
under a divineleadership, he had seen mankind on the verge of

awakening to the kingdom of God. "That solves no mystery," he
whispered, gripping the seat and frowning at the water;

"mysteries remain mysteries; but that is the reality of religion.
And now, now, what is my place? What have I to do? That is the

question I have been asking always; the question that this moment
now will answer; what have I to do?...

God was coming into the life of all mankind in the likeness of
a captain and a king; all the governments of men, all the leagues

of men, their debts and claims and possessions, must give way to
the world republic under God the king. For five troubled years he

had been staring religion in the face, and now he saw that it
must mean this--or be no more than fetishism, Obi, Orphic

mysteries or ceremonies of Demeter, a legacy of mental dirtiness,
a residue of self-mutilation and superstitious sacrifices from

the cunning, fear-haunted, ape-dog phase of human development.
But

it did mean this. And every one who apprehended as much was
called by that very apprehension to the service of God's kingdom.

To live and serve God's kingdom on earth, to help to bring it
about, to propagate the idea of it, to establish the method of

it, to incorporate all that one made and all that one did into
its growing reality, was the only possible life that could be

lived, once that God was known.
He sat with his hands gripping his knees, as if he were holding

on to his idea. "And now for my part," he whispered, brows knit,
"now for my part."

Ever since he had given his confirmation addresses he had been
clear that his task, or at least a considerableportion of his

task, was to tell of this faith in God and of this conception of
service in his kingdom as the form and rule of human life and

human society. But up to now he had been floundering hopelessly
in his search for a method and means of telling. That, he saw,

still needed to be thought out. For example, one cannot run
through the world crying, "The Kingdom of God is at hand." Men's

minds were still so filled with old theological ideas that for
the most part they would understand by that only a fantasy of

some great coming of angels and fiery chariots and judgments, and
hardly a soul but would doubt one's sanity and turn scornfully

away. But one must proclaim God not to confuse but to convince
men's minds. It was that and the habit of his priestly calling

that had disposed him towards a pulpit. There he could reason and
explain. The decorativegenius of Lady Sunderbund had turned that

intention into a vast iridescent absurdity.
This sense he had of thinking openly in the sight of God,

enabled him to see the adventure of Lady Sunderbund without
illusion and without shame. He saw himself at once honest and

disingenuous, divided between two aims. He had no doubt now of
the path he had to pursue. A stronger man of permanently clear

aims might possibly turn Lady Sunderbund into a useful
opportunity, oblige her to provide the rostrum he needed; but for

himself, he knew he had neither the needed strength nor
clearness; she would smother him in decoration, overcome him by

her picturesque persistence. It might be ridiculous to run away
from her, but it was necessary. And he was equally clear now that

for him there must be no idea of any pulpit, of any sustained
mission. He was a man of intellectual moods; only at times, he

realized, had he the inspiration of truth; upon such uncertain
snatches and glimpses he must live; to make his life a ministry

would be to face phases when he would simply be "carrying on,"
with his mind blank and his faith asleep.

His thought spread out from this perennial decision to more
general things again. Had God any need of organized priests at

all? Wasn't that just what had been the matter with religion for
the last three thousand years?

His vision and his sense of access to God had given a new
courage to his mind; in these moods of enlightenment he could see

the world as a comprehensible ball, he could see history as an
understandable drama. He had always been on the verge of

realizing before, he realized now, the two entirely different and
antagonistic strands that interweave in the twisted rope of

contemporary religion; the old strand of the priest, the
fetishistic element of the blood sacrifice and the obscene rite,

the element of ritual and tradition, of the cult, the caste, the
consecrated tribe; and interwoven with this so closely as to be

scarcely separable in any existing religion was the new strand,
the religion of the prophets, the unidolatrous universalworship

of the one true God. Priest religion is the antithesis to prophet
religion. He saw that the founders of all the great existing

religions of the world had been like himself--only that he was
a weak and commonplace man with no creative force, and they had

been great men of enormous initiative--men reaching out, and
never with a complete definition, from the old kind of religion

to the new. The Hebrew prophets, Jesus, whom the priests killed
when Pilate would have spared him, Mohammed, Buddha, had this

much in common that they had sought to lead men from temple
worship, idol worship, from rites and ceremonies and the rule of

priests, from anniversaryism and sacramentalism, into a direct
and simple relation to the simplicity of God. Religious progress

had always been liberation and simplification. But none of these
efforts had got altogether clear. The organizing temper in men,

the disposition to dogmatic theorizing, the distrust of the
discretion of the young by the wisdom of age, the fear of

indiscipline which is so just in warfare and so foolish in
education, the tremendous power of the propitiatory tradition,

had always caught and crippled every new gospel before it had run
a score of years. Jesus for example gave man neither a theology

nor a church organization; His sacrament was an innocent feast of
memorial; but the fearful, limited, imitative men he left to

carry on his work speedily restored all these three abominations
of the antiquated religion, theology, priest, and sacrifice.

Jesus indeed, caught into identification with the ancient victim
of the harvest sacrifice and turned from a plain teacher into a

horrible blood bath and a mock cannibal meal, was surely the
supreme feat of the ironies of chance....

"It is curious how I drift back to Jesus," said Scrope. "I have
never seen how much truth and good there was in his teaching

until I broke away from Christianity and began to see him plain.
If I go on as I am going, I shall end a Nazarene...."

He thought on. He had a feeling of temerity, but then it seemed
as if God within him bade him be of good courage.

Already in a glow of inspiration he had said practically as
much as he was now thinking in his confirmation address, but now

he realized completely what it was he had then said. There could
be no priests, no specialized ministers of the one true God,

because every man to the utmostmeasure of his capacity was bound
to be God's priest and minister. Many things one may leave to

specialists: surgery, detailed administration, chemistry, for
example; but it is for every man to think his own philosophy and

think out his own religion. One man may tell another, but no man
may take charge of another. A man may avail himself of

electrician or gardener or what not, but he must stand directly
before God; he may suffer neither priest nor king. These other

things are incidental, but God, the kingdom of God, is what he is
for.

"Good," he said, checking his reasoning. "So I must bear
witness to God--but neither as priest nor pastor. I must write

and talk about him as I can. No reason why I should not live by
such writing and talking if it does not hamper my message to do

so. But there must be no high place, no ordered congregation. I
begin to see my way....

The evening was growing dark and chill about him now, the sky
was barred with deep bluish purple bands drawn across a chilly

brightness that had already forgotten the sun, the trees were