It was this course of speculation which converted Kennaston to an abiding faith in Christianity, such as, our rector informs me, is deplorably rare in these lax pleasure-loving days of materialism. To believe this inconsiderable planet the peculiar center of a God’s efforts and attention had for a long while strained Kennaston’s credulity: the thing was so woefully out of proportion when you considered earth’s relative value in the universe. But now Felix Kennaston comprehended that in the insensate universe there was no proportion. The idea was unknown to the astral architect, or at best no part of his plan, if indeed there had been any pre-meditation or contriver concerned. Singly on our small earth—not even in the solar system of which earth made a part—was any sense of proportion evinced; and there it was apparent only in living things. Kennaston seemed to glimpse an Artist-God, with a commendable sense of form—Kennaston’s fellow craftsman—the earth as that corner of the studio wherein the God was working just now, and all life as a romance the God was inditing.... That the plot of this romance began with Eden and reached its climax at Calvary, Kennaston was persuaded, solely and ardently, because of the surpassing beauty of the Christ-legend. No other myth compared with it from an æsthetic standpoint. He could imagine no theme more adequate to sustain a great romance than this of an Author suffering willingly for His puppets’ welfare; and mingling with His puppets in the similitude of one of them; and able to wring only contempt and pity from His puppets—since He had not endowed them with any faculties wherewith to comprehend their Creator’s nature and intent. Indeed, it was pretty much the plight which Kennaston had invented for his own puppets at Storisende, as Kennaston complacently reflected. It was the most tremendous situation imaginable; and quite certainly no Author could ever have failed to perceive, and to avail Himself of, its dramatic possibilities. To conceive that the world-romance did not center upon Calvary was to presume an intelligent and skilled Romancer blind to the basic principles of His art. His sense of pathos and of beauty and of irony could have led Him to select no other legend. And in the inconsistencies and unsolved problems, or even the apparent contradictions, of Christianity, Felix Kennaston could see only a possible error or omission on the Author’s part, such as was common to all romances. A few errata did not hamper the tale’s worth and splendor, or render it a whit less meritorious of admiration....