He put it on the table, and George opened it at the sentence, “_He that can best tell how to suffer will best keep himself in peace_. _That man is conqueror of himself_, _and lord of the world_, _the friend of Christ_, _and the heir of heaven_.” He turned over the leaves again—“_He to whom the Eternal Word speaketh is delivered from a world of unnecessary conceptions_.” Zachariah bent his head near him and gently expounded the texts. As the exposition grew George’s heart dilated, and he was carried beyond his troubles. It was the birth in him—even in him, a Cowfold ironmonger, not a scholar by any means—of what philosophers call the _idea_, that Incarnation which has ever been our Redemption. He said nothing to Zachariah about his own affairs, nor did Zachariah, as before observed, say anything to him; but the two knew one another, and felt that they knew one another as intimately as if George had imparted to his friend the minutest details of his unhappiness with his wife. Towards the end of the afternoon Pauline returned, and inquired how the battle went in Cowfold. “I am afraid we shall be beaten. Sometimes I don’t seem to care much about it.” “Don’t care! Why not?” “Oh, we talk and talk, father and I, and somehow people’s minds are made up without talking, and nobody ever changes. When we have our meetings, who is it who comes? Does Bushel come? Not a bit of it. We only get our own set.” “Well,” said Zachariah, the old man’s republican revolutionary ardour returning, “this is about the only struggle in which I have felt much interest of late years. I should like to have cheap bread, and what is more, I should like to deprive the landlords of that bit of the price which makes the bread dear. I agree with you, my boy. Endless discussion is all very well—forms ‘public opinion,’ they say; but I wish a stop could be put to it when it has come round to where it began; that one side could say to the other, ‘You have heard all our logic, and we have heard all yours;’ now then, let us settle it. ‘Who is the strongest and best drilled?’ I believe in insurrection. Everlasting debate—and it is not genuine debate, for nobody really ranges himself alongside his enemy’s strongest points—demoralises us all. It encourages all sorts of sophistry, becomes mere manœuvring, and saps people’s faith in the truth. In half an hour, if two persons were to sit opposite one another, they could muster every single reason for and against Free Trade. What is the use of going on after that? Moreover, insurrection strengthens the belief of men in the right. A man who voluntarily incurs the risk of being shot believes ever afterwards, if he escapes, a little more earnestly than he did before. ‘Who is on the Lord’s side, let him come unto me,’ says the flag. Insurrection strengthens, too, the faith of others. When a company of poor men meet together and declare that things have got to such a pass that they will either kill their enemies or die