He would insult the Power that masqueraded as Love. He strode in. The place was quiet. Sitting in the nave, he lounged and maintained a careful sneer, planning some bold free outrage. But the place was quiet and the few people ignored him. Presently he was absently studying the structure of column and vaulting; till defiance left him. Strange, he thought, how those old builders transformed efficient engineering with limited materials into high art! Soon he was marvelling, as I had marvelled, that stone should live and praise while in our hearts faith lies dead.

He considered those builders and their faith; and the long succession of robed ecclesiastics, vessels of an aged, a mellow and a potent wine. He considered the hosts of believers who had formerly thronged where now he sat alone; the ploughmen and house- wives, the burghers and gentry. All were believers, however erring their conduct. All were participators in the communal delusion (as it then seemed to him) of love's divinity. In those past days, he supposed, the clouded minds of men were still warmly though vaguely irradiated by the already remote event that had blazed on the Cross. Sitting in that silent place, he tried, not out of reverence but through sheer curiosity and self-pitying resentment, to hear and if possible feel the far-off chanting of those worshippers. With quickened imagination he probed back still farther through the centuries to scrutinize objectively the reputed event itself. That individual, Jesus, if indeed he existed and was not merely a myth, must have been a man of singular sensitivity and intelligence; for he, before all others, clearly conceived (so we are told) that love is for all of us the way of life. And from this perception the remarkable Jew passed on to the conviction that love must be God. Living in an age before reason could expose the fallacy (for so it still seemed to this destined Christian), Christ easily persuaded himself that in the high experience of life he had indeed come face to face with God. And this exquisite delusion so kindled him that he was able to live his whole life as a shining, a dazzling example and symbol of love. And so, in the strength of his delusion, he became the star of a new faith.

So it seemed to this engineer, brooding in the bombed cathedral. But he reminded himself that the crucified prophet, in his last moments, had cried that his God had forsaken him. Those eyes, appealing to heaven, saw only the void.

Once more the Christian seized my arm and brought us face to face. He said, "But now, in that dark night of my despair, light began to dawn on me. I began to see that Christ alone gave meaning to this bleak, meaningless world."

He released my arm, and once more we paced the close. I noticed (but he paid no attention) that the sky was now all sombre, and on the flagstones of our pathway a few large drops had fallen. Nursemaids were already encasing their struggling or patient charges in mackintoshes. A small boy, uncooperative, put out his tongue at heaven, in defiance or merely to catch raindrops.

Self-concerned, the Christian recounted the stages of his conversion. At last he was impelled to consider more and more earnestly the actual character of that remote and singular individual. But he could form no clear picture, so ignorant was he. He conceived only a passionately generous young man, intelligent, yet also in a way simple and even naive, preaching the life of love to a world incapable of it; till the world destroyed him. Yes, but that singular individual had indeed given men a vision of what they might be, if by miracle they could be raised a little beyond their brutishness. In his own person he had indeed shown them the life of love; shown them the divine spirit, the one thing worshipful.

I had been nodding approval.