A muffled and monotonous sound of chanting--the twinkling of many bright lights,--and the subdued rustling movement of many people gathered together,--these were the next impressions that awakened McNason to renewed consciousness. He stood in what seemed a shadowy forest of architecture;--there were great marble monuments all round him inscribed with the names of famous poets, warriors and historians, and on one of these the Goblin squatted cross-legged beside him, blinking with its owl-like eyes. “There’s not a seat to be had, McNason!” it remarked, with a leer--“You must stand! Oh, Beelzebub! What a thing it is to be a ‘fashionable’ preacher! Nothing ‘draws!’ so well nowadays as an Atheist in Holy Orders! Not even our reverend brother ‘Firebrand’! Oh, hoo-roo!” McNason looked bewilderedly about him. Surely he knew the place he was in?--its blackened arches, its shadowy aisles were not wholly unfamiliar? Gradually he recognised it as that melancholy Valhalla of English departed greatness, Westminster Abbey. But why had his uncanny incubus, “Professor” Goblin, brought him hither? What had he to do with the dense crowd of people massed round him--all looking--all listening----! Hush! The monotonous chanting ceased--there was a brief pause of pretence at prayer--and then a man’s voice, clear and incisive, but with a falsetto ring of cold superciliousness and irony in its tone, sounded vibratingly on the silence. The Church’s ordained Preacher of the Gospel began to preach, and Josiah McNason, more than any other human unit in the congregation, was compelled to listen. And as he listened, he became aware that this same ordained preacher was calmly, but none the less surely, doing his best to undermine the very faith of which he was a professed disciple. Craftily, and with cunningly devised arguments, which held their meaning deftly secreted under a veil of choice expressions and well-turned phrases, he spoke of “old” beliefs with delicate tolerance and compassion--throwing in occasional questionings as to the meaning of “miracles,” and setting down “Divine” interposition as a fable, or rather as a beautiful myth which in the “darker” ages of the world was eminently useful as a means of intimidating and chastening the spirits of the ignorant. He spoke much of a “New Feeling” which was awakening among more advanced and civilised human kind,--that special “New Feeling” which looks upon Man as in himself supreme, and answerable to no Higher Tribunal than His Own for his actions. He deprecated the unfortunately chaotic state of things in the Churches which prevented a full inquiry into the foundations of belief, and hoped that the time was fast approaching when a larger and broader view might be obtained, and humanity be absolved from special duties to a Supernatural Conception which might possibly be a mistaken conception after all. In fine, the drift of his involved and euphuistic eloquence was to imply that pigmy Man