me.'

'He died for you.'

'I care for the world, and not myself.'

'He died for the world.'

'And has deserted it, as folks say now, and become--an absentee,
performing His work by deputies. . . . Do not start; the blasphemy
is not mine, but those who preach it. No wonder that the owners of
the soil think it no shame to desert their estates, when preachers
tell them that He to whom they say, all power is given in heaven and
earth, has deserted His.'

'What would you have, my dear sir?' asked the father.

'What the Jews had. A king of my nation, and of the hearts of my
nation, who would teach soldiers, artists, craftsmen, statesmen,
poets, priests, if priests there must be. I want a human lord, who
understands me and the millions round me, pities us, teaches us,
orders our history, civilisation, development for us. I come to
you, full of manhood, and you send me to a woman. I go to the
Protestants, full of desires to right the world--and they begin to
talk of the next life, and give up this as lost!'

A quiet smile lighted up the thin wan face, full of unfathomable
thoughts; and he replied, again half to himself,--

'Am I God, to kill or to make alive, that thou sendest to me to