Yet God moves in a mysterious way, and who were they to say that the Father had not sent them a message from on high?
Miracle is not dead yet, whatever the materialists may say. Ask a captain of the Salvation Army if Mary Magdalene does not still come to the foot of the Cross! Ask the head of the Church Army if a thief is never converted at almost the last moment in his evil career! Ask an Anglican priest, a Congregationalist minister—a Roman Catholic priest,—for their experiences of death-beds!
One and all will tell you that God rules the world still, the Holy Spirit yet broods upon the waters.
Hampson returned to his rooms in Bloomsbury. After a simple dinner, during which Butler's Analogy was propped up against the water-bottle, he changed into evening clothes and walked down to the Frivolity Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue.
The long curve of that street of theatres was thronged with carriages, motor broughams, and cabs. Beautifully-dressed women with filmy lace mantillas over their shining hair, attended by well-groomed men in opera hats and white cashmere scarves, descended from the vehicles and entered this or that theatre. The whole place blazed with light.
The great arc-lamps shone on the posters and the marble façades crowned with their huge electric advertisements. The smart restaurants of Piccadilly, Regent Street, and the Haymarket were pouring out their guests at this hour when all the plays were beginning.
The London world of pleasure was awake in all its material splendor, luxury and sin. The candle was alight, the gaudy moths fluttering around it.
A man and woman descended from a hansom just as Hampson arrived under the portico of the theatre, the woman so covered with jewels that these alone, to say nothing of her general manner and appearance, sufficiently indicated her class.
Hampson shuddered as he gave his hat and coat to an attendant, and walked down the softly carpeted corridor through the warm, perfumed air to the stalls.
The theatre was very full. On all sides wealth and luxury displayed themselves in unbounded profusion. But this was an audience nearly every member of which was devoted to folly, idle amusement, and worse. Hampson saw vice stamped upon the faces all round him, vice or stupidity, and carelessness.