that, and still lead a worldly, unsatisfactory life, you may be sure that there is nothing in them that has the true ring of manhood or womanhood."

I was left alone to enter Mr. Toyner's gates. I found myself in a large pleasure-ground, where Nature had been guided, not curtailed, in her work. I was walking upon a winding drive, walled on either side by a wild irregular line of shrubs, where the delicate forms of acacias and crab-apples lifted themselves high in comparison to the lower lilac and elderberry-bushes. I watched the sunlit acacias as they fluttered, spreading their delicate leaves and golden pods against the blue above me. I made my way leisurely in the direction of music which I heard at some distance. I had not advanced far before another person came into my path.

He was a slight, delicate man of middle size. His hair and moustache were almost quite white. Something in the air of neatness and perfection about his dress, in the extreme gravity and clearness of his grey eyes, even in the fine texture of that long, thin, drooping moustache, made it evident to me that this new companion was not what we call an ordinary person.

"Your friend did not come in with you." The voice spoke disappointment; the speaker looked wistfully at the form of the retreating clergyman which he could just see through a gap in the shrubs.

"You wished him to come?"

"I saw you coming. I came toward the gate in the hope that he might come in." Then he added a word of cordial greeting. I perceived that I was walking with my host.

There are some men to whom one instinctively pays the compliment of direct speech. "I have been walking with two clergymen. I understand that you differ from both with regard to religious opinion."

It appeared to me that after this speech of mine he took my measure quietly. He did not say in so many words he did not see that this difference of opinion was a sufficient reason for their absence, but by some word or sign he gave me to understand that, adding:

"I feel myself deprived of a great benefit in being without their society. They are the two best and noblest men I know."

"It is rare for men to take pleasure in the society of their opponents."

"Yet you will admit that to be willing to learn from those from whom we differ is the only path to wisdom."

"It is difficult to tread that path without letting go what we already have, and that produces chaos."

With intensity both of thought and feeling he took up the words that I had dropped half idly, and showed me what he thought to be the truth and untruth of them. There was a grave earnestness in his speech which made his opinion on this subject suddenly become of moment to me, and his intensity did not produce any of that sensation of irritation or opposition which the intensity of most men produces as soon as it is felt.

"You think that the chief obstacle which is hindering the progress of true religion in the world at present is that while we will not learn from those who disagree with us we can obtain no new light, and that when we are willing to reach after their light we become also willing to let go what we have had, so that the world does not gain but loses by the transaction. This is, I admit, an obstacle to thought; but it is not the essential difficulty of our age."

"Let us consider," I said, in my pedantic way, "how my difficulty may be overcome, and then let us discuss that one you consider to be essential."

Toyner's choice of words, like his appearance, betrayed a strong, yet finely chiselled personality.

"We are truly accustomed now to the idea that whatever has life cannot possibly remain unchanged, but must always develop by leaving some part behind and producing some part that is new. It is God's will that the religious thought of the world, which is made up of the thought of individuals, shall proceed in this way, whether we will or not, but it must always help progress when we can make our wills at one with God's in this matter; we go faster and safer so. Now to say that to submit willingly to God's law of growth is to produce chaos must certainly be a fallacy. It must then be a fallacy to argue that to keep a mind open to all influences is antagonistic to the truest religious life; we cannot—whether we wish or not, we cannot—let go any truth that has been assimilated into our lives; and what truth we have not assimilated it is no advantage to hold without agitation. We know better where we are when we are forced to sift it. It is the very great apparent advantage of recognised order that deceives us! When we lose that apparent advantage, when we lose, too, the familiar names and symbols, and think, like children, that we have lost the reality they have expressed to us, a very low state of things appears to result. The strain and stress of life become much greater. Ah! but, my friend, it is that strain and stress that shape us into the image of God."

"You hinted, I think, that to your mind there was a more real obstacle, one peculiar to our age."

Ever since I first met him I have been puzzled to know how it was that I often knew so nearly what Toyner meant when he only partially expressed his thought; he had this power over my understanding. He was my master from the first.

He laid his hand now slightly upon my arm, as though to emphasise what he said.

"It is a little hard to explain it reverently," he said, "and still harder to understand why the difficulty should have come about, but in our day it would seem that the nights of prayer and the fresh intuition into the laws of God's working, which we see united in the life of our great Example, have become divorced. It is their union again that we must have—that we shall have; but at present there is the difficulty for every man of us—the men who lead us in either path are different men and lead different ways. Our law-givers are not the men who meet God upon the mount. Our scientists are not the teachers who are pre-eminent for fasting and prayer. We who to be true to ourselves must follow in both paths find our souls perplexed."

In front of us, as we turned a curve in the drive, a bed of scarlet lilies stood stately in the sun, and a pair of bickering sparrows rose from the fountain near which they grew. Toyner made a slight gesture of his hand. With the eagerness of a child he asked:

"Is it not hard to believe that we may ask and expect forgiveness and gifts from the God who by slow inevitable laws of growth clothes the lilies, who ordains the fall of every one of these sparrows, foresees the fall and ordains it—the God whose character is expressed in physical law? The texts of Jesus have become so trite that we forget that they contain the same vision of 'God's mind in all things' that makes it so hard to believe in a personality in God, that makes prayer seem to us so futile."

We came out of the shrubbery upon a bank that dropped before us to a level lawn. I found myself in the midst of a company of people among whom were the other members of the new School Council. Below, upon the lawn, there was a little spectacle going on for our entertainment—a morris-dance, simply and gracefully performed by young people dressed in quaintly fashioned frocks of calico; there was good music too—one or two instruments, to which they danced. Round the other side of the grass an avenue of stately Canadian maples shut in the view, except where the river or the pale blue of the eastern horizon