Chapter 30 - Page 2

any comfort?" said Baird. His eyes were wet, and he spoke as in bitter appeal. "This had been a child in her teens entrapped into bearing the curse of the world with all its results of mental horror and physical agony."

"What comfort could I give?" was the answer. "My religion and my social creed had taught me that she was a vile sinner--the worst and most shameful of sinners--and that I was a criminal for striving to save her from the consequences of her sin. I was defying the law of the just God, who would have punished her with heart-break and open shame. He would not have spared her, and He would not spare me since I so strove against Him. The night she died--through the long hours of horrible, unnatural convulsions of pain--when cold sweat stood in drops on her deathly childish face, she would clutch my hands and cry out: 'Eternal torments! For ever and ever and ever--could it be like this, Lucien--for ever and ever and ever?' Then she would sob out, 'God! God! God!' in terrible, helpless prayer. She had not strength for other words."

Baird sprang to his feet and thrust out his hand, averting his pallid face.

"Don't tell me any more," he said. "I cannot--I cannot bear it."

"She bore it," said Latimer, "until death ended it."

"Was there no one--to save her?" Baird cried. "Was she terrified like that when she died?"

"The man who afterwards took her child--the man D'Willerby," Latimer answered, "was a kindly soul. At the last moment he took her poor little hand and patted it, and told her not to be frightened. She turned to him as if for refuge. He had a big, mellow voice, and a tender, protecting way. He said: 'Don't be frightened. It's all right,' and his were the last words she heard."

"God bless the fellow, wheresoever he is!" Baird exclaimed. "I should like to grasp his hand."

* * * * * * *

The Reverend John Baird delivered his lectures in many cities that year. The discussion they gave rise to had the natural result of awakening a keen interest in them. There were excellent souls who misinterpreted and deplored them, there were excellent souls who condemned; there were even ministers of the gospel who preached against the man as an iconoclast and a pagan, and forbade their congregations to join his audiences. But his lecture-halls were always crowded, and the hundreds of faces upturned to him when he arose upon his platform were the faces of eager, breathless, yearning creatures. He was a man speaking to men, not an echo of old creeds. He uttered no threats, he painted no hells, he called aloud to that God in man which is his soul.

"That God which is in you--in me," he proclaimed, "has lain dormant because undeveloped man, having made for himself in the dark ages gods of wood and