But—oh horrible!—here is a dignitary of the state, there even a personage of the church, who will not be led to further the vast scheme of secluding the waters of these newborn rivulets from the vulgar gaze or the profane thirst of the laity. There follow sharp rebukes and rebellious retorts, inquisitions and excommunications; factions breed, and wrangling takes the place of deliberation. Slowly the scene’s central interest changes for us, and we find we are watching, not the miraculous birth of many waters, but battling crowds of angry partisans, surging this way and that. Now a little band of stalwarts, who strive to keep the stream open to their fellows, is routed and dispersed; now their following increases, and in due time their supporters are rallied again—sometimes to a temporary victory, with short lived reward and quick reverse, sometimes to repeated disaster and defeat. But ever the waters inevitably remain only half-guarded, and by ones and threes the people find their way to them, some stealthily, some defiantly, and drink of them—and are sealed. The little bands of stalwarts grow to great followings, and their trend is as irresistible as the source of their inspiration. Once again the scene changes. As our eyes wander over it, we see that it is not now a matter of mere civil warfare in isolated spots; it is the nations themselves that rage furiously together; the western world is one great battle-ground for the opposing forces. Treaties and wars, alliances and royal marriages, all are but the flotsam and jetsam on the surface of this ever increasing, ever multiplying river,—sublime in the far-flung grandeur of its streamlets and tributaries, its still deeps and its raging cataracts—not one department of the whole landscape of human life, in all its variety, but reveals its vague new workings or its established deep-set currents. Ah! At last we realize it: this is indeed the river of Freedom, washing away, bearing away, surely, irresistibly—quietly if it may, turbulently if it must—the worn-out earth-crust of the moribund Feudal world, giving place to the bloom and blossom of a new era in the history of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth and declaring the triumph for all time of Soul-Freedom for His people.