of the human countenances, for it is the meaning of him who made them.  So with the confession of the Church of England:  he believes that not man only, but God also, and God first and chief, had to do with the making of it; and therefore he looks in it for the Eternal and the Divine, and he finds what he seeks.  And as no words can avoid bearing in them the possibility of a variety of interpretations, he would exclude whatever the words might mean, or, regarded merely as words, do mean, in a narrow exposition:  he thinks it would be dishonest to take the low meaning as the meaning.  To return to the faces:  he passes by moods and tempers, and beholds the main character —­ that on whose surface the temporal and transient floats.  Both in faces and in formulae he loves the divine substance, with his true, manly, brave heart; and as for the faults in both —­ for man, too, has his share in both —­ I believe he is ready to die by them, if only in so doing he might die for them. —­ I had a vision of him this morning as I sat and listened to his voice, which always seems to me to come immediately from his heart, as if his heart spoke with lips of its own.  Shall I tell you my vision? —­

“I saw a crowd —­ priests and laymen —­ speeding, hurrying, darting away, up a steep, crumbling height.  Mitres, hoods, and hats rolled behind them to the bottom.  Every one for himself, with hands and feet they scramble and flee, to save their souls from the fires of hell which come rolling in along the hollow below with the forward ‘pointing spires’ of billowy flame.  But beneath, right in the course of the fire, stands one man upon a little rock which goes down to the centre of the great world, and faces the approaching flames.  He stands bareheaded, his eyes bright with faith in God, and the mighty mouth that utters his truth, fixed in holy defiance.  His denial comes from no fear, or weak dislike to that which is painful.  On neither side will he tell lies for peace.  He is ready to be lost for his fellow-men.  In the name of God he rebukes the flames of hell.  The fugitives pause on the top, look back, call him lying prophet, and shout evil opprobrious names at the man who counts not his own life dear to him, who has forgotten his own soul in his sacred devotion to men, who fills up what is left behind of the sufferings of Christ, for his body’s sake —­ for the human race, of which he is the head.  Be sure that, come what may of the rest, let the flames of hell ebb or flow, that man is safe, for he is delivered already from the only devil that can make hell itself a torture, the devil of selfishness —­ the only one that can possess a man and make himself his own living hell.  He is out of all that region of things, and already dwelling in the secret place of the Almighty.”

“Go on, go on.”