. "I can
answer you better, my friend, by sticking to my own case. I have never
talked of it before; but, if it helps you, I can't very well refuse to
talk of it now. I came to the Church with empty hands, having passed
through the crisis that seems to be upon you. She filled those empty
hands, for she honored me and gave me power. She set me in high
places, and I honestly tried to be worthy. I worked for her, and I
seemed to succeed. Then--and very suddenly and quietly--she pulled me
down, and tore my robe of honor from me. My fellow priests, my old
friends, criticised me and judged me harshly. They came no more to see
me, though I had been generous with them. In the college I built and
directed, one of my old friends sits in my place and forgets who put
him there. Another is the Bishop who disgraced me. Now, have I a
right to feel angry and rebel?"

"To me," said Mark, "it seems as if you have."

"I have not," and the priest spoke very earnestly. "I have no such
right. I never knew--for I did not ask--the reason of my disgrace.
But one thing I did know; I knew it was for my good. I knew that,
though it was a trial given me by men, there was in it, too, something
given by God. You judge as I should have judged ten years ago--by the
standards of the world. I judge now by other standards. It took
adversity to open my eyes. We are not here, my dear Mark, for the
little, but for the big things. I had the little and I thought they
were big. My fall from a place of honor has taught me that they were
really little, and that it is only now that I have the big. What is
religion for but to enlighten and to save--enlighten here that the
future may hold salvation? What were my purple, power and title?
Nothing, unless I could make them help to enlighten and to save myself
and others. I ought to have fought them, but I was not big enough to
see that they hindered where I could have made them help. Like a bolt
out of the sunlight came the stripping. My shame was the best offering
I have made during all the days of my life. In my misery I went to God
as naturally as the poor prodigal son went to his father when he was
reduced to eating husks from the trough of the swine. I asked nothing
as to the cause of my fall. I knew that, according to man's
standard--even according to the laws that she herself had made--that
the Church had been unjust; but I did not ask to know anything about
it, for the acceptance