Was it all true? or was it only a beautiful myth? If it were true, where was the proof? Not in history, for this, the most wonderful and miraculous thing in all the story of mankind, stands unrecorded save by the pens of those who were themselves under the spell of it. In subsequent marvels and wonder-workings?--he shook his head mournfully. If any such there had been, those impartial witnesses who must have known and should have spoken were silent, and now all the earth was silent: storms rose in their fury and were calmed for no man's _Peace, be still_; earthquakes engulfed pagan and Christian believer alike; all nature was cruel, relentless, mechanical. Was there nothing then to reach down the ages from that Christmas morning so long ago to make the beautiful first-century myth a latter-day reality? Tom cast about him hopelessly. There was the Church--one and indivisible, if the myth were true. The slow Gordon smile gathered at the corners of his eyes. He remembered a thing his mother had said to him long ago, when, in a moment of boyish confidence, he had told her of the climb to Crestcliffe Inn and its purpose. "Ardea's a dear girl, as the children of this world go, Thomas; she's been right loving and kind to me since we've come to be such close neighbors. But"--with a note of solemn warning in her voice--"you must never forget that she's an Episcopalian, a lost soul, dead in forms and ceremonies and trespasses and sins." So his mother scoffed at Ardea's faith; and Ardea--no, she did not scoff, her contempt was too generous for that; but it was there, just the same. And the Methodists fellowshiped neither, and the Baptists excluded the Methodists, and the Catholics retorted to the Protestant charge of apostasy with the centuries-old cry of "heretics all"! Which of the scores of divisions and subdivisions was the one true indivisible body of Christ? Tom shook his head again. There was no hope of proof in the churches. And the world? He was only now verging on manhood, and he had seen little of the world. But that little was frankly indifferent to the things which, if they were worthy of belief, should shake an unsaved world to its very foundations. Its people bought and sold, built houses and laid up stores of the things that perish, grasped, overreached, did what they listed. But for that matter, even those who professed to be followers of the Christ, who asserted most loudly their belief in the unproved things, fought and struggled and sinned in common with the worldlings, as far as Tom could see. He turned from the window and from the vision, and went to stand with his back to the flickering blaze in the grate. It was going to leave a huge rift in his life when this thing, with all its rootings and anchorings in childhood and boyhood, was torn out and cast aside. The mere thought of it was appalling. What would there be to fill the void?