“What a strange story,” he said; “and that really happened to you, Captain Hardy?” “To me, sir, in the Mediterranean, more than forty years ago.” “The strangest thing about it is that the old Commodore should have managed to get all the way to the ship, and then not have known where his nephew was,” said Blake. “He only knew his nephew’s berth, you see, sir,” said the Captain. “But he might have beat about through the ship till he had found him.” “You must remember that he was at his last breath, sir,” said the Captain; “you can’t expect a man to have his head clear at such a moment.” “Not a man, perhaps; but I should a ghost,” said Blake. “Time was everything to him,” went on the Captain, without regarding the interruption, “space nothing. But the strangest part of it is that I should have seen the figure at all. It’s true I had been thinking of the old uncle, because of the boy’s illness; but I can’t suppose he was thinking of me, and, as I say, he never recognized me. I have taken a great deal of interest in such matters since that time, but I have never met with just such a case as this.” “No, that is the puzzle. One can fancy his appearing to his nephew well enough,” said Tom. “We can’t account for these things, or for a good many other things which ought to be quite as startling, only we see them every day.” LXXVII. Christianity is in no more real danger now than it was a hundred and fifty years ago, when Dean Swift, and many other greater wits than we have amongst us nowadays, thought and said that it was doomed. We hold in perfect good faith, that the good news our Lord brought is the best the world will ever hear; that there has been a revelation in the man Jesus Christ, of God the Creator of the world as our Father, so that the humblest and poorest man can know God for all purposes for which men need to know him in this life, and can have his help in becoming like him, the business for which they were sent into it: and that there will be no other revelation, though this one will be, through all time, unfolding to men more and more of its unspeakable depth, and glory, and beauty, in external nature, in human society, in individual men. That, I believe to be a fair statement of the positive religious belief of average Englishmen, if they had to think it out and to put it in words; and all who hold it must of course look upon Christ’s gospel as the great purifying, reforming, redeeming power in the world, and desire that it shall be free to work in their own country on the most favorable conditions which can be found for it. LXXVIII.