But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar."

I have already restated my thesis: let me do
so once again. We shall gain nothing by dealing
with generalities. Let us open the Gospels at
the last of the test passages I have cited, and take
the well-known words:--

"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe
in God, believe also in me.

"In my Father's house are many mansions:
if it were not so, I would have told you. I go
to prepare a place for you.

"And if I go and prepare a place for you, I
will come again and receive you unto myself;
that where I am, there ye may be also."

May we still use such words as these to
comfort us in sorrow, and to cheer and
strengthen us when life is failing, and its
supreme crisis is drawing near? May we still
trust them, as our fathers did, as a message
from the heart and lips of our Saviour and Lord,
ministered to us by the Divine Spirit who
inspired His servant to record them? May we
read the Gospels thus? Or is all this but an ex-
quisite dream from which we must awake to the
clear, cold light of nineteenth-century criticism?

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