He had converted a Brand Street dance-hall into an auditorium, and the popular lectures he gave there drew many followers to his feet. He spoke with equal power on social, on religious, and on literary themes. Young working-men flocked round him to hear him set forth the wrongs of our present system of government, and the better things to be. Night after night the hall was crowded by men and women of all ranks and all occupations, who watched with untiring interest his treatment of positivism, agnosticism, atheism, Schopenhauerism, and his triumphant exposition of a belief that they are all recognized and transcended in the creed of the Anglican church.
I can see him now, if I shut my eyes,—a nervous little figure behind the low desk. There was a curious glint in his eyes, which were always looking over and beyond the heads of his audience. I can see, too, the eager, stricken faces of his hearers. They drank in his teachings with consuming thirst.
I have heard him speak many times, but I have rarely seen the eyes of one of his listeners removed an instant from his face. A kind of mesmeric power held them. There were questionings and rebellious objections before his arrival, or after his departure, but never in his presence.
I remember the comments made by two young granite-cutters one night before his lecture, Lecture X., in the “Exposition of Contemporary Thought.”
“I can’t for the life of me see,” said one of them, “how he can believe all this ’ere science and evolution and believe in Genesis too. ’Spose he’ll answer if I ask him?”
“Try,” said the other. “If he can’t answer your question, he’ll turn it into something he can answer. He’ll talk, anyway. And I’ll bet a dollar you won’t know but what he’s talking about the thing you asked him.”
But that very night the two young sceptics were smitten down. The Altruist pronounced their questions ignorant and crude, and explained the apparent contradiction in his beliefs as a part of the eternal paradox at the heart of all things.
I invited Janet to go with me on this particular Sunday, but she refused.
“I think that I would rather not hear Paul expound Job,” she said.
“He will do it brilliantly,” I suggested.