tantinople, and might give the
patriarch himself some trouble' if he crossed her holy will!'

'What! will Cyril truckle to such creatures?'

'Cyril is a wise man in his generation--too wise, some say, for a child
of the light. But at least, he knows there is no use fighting with those
whom you cannot conquer; and while he can get money out of these great
ladies for his almshouses, and orphan-houses, and lodging-houses, and
hospitals, and workshops, and all the rest of it--and in that, I will
say for him, there is no man on earth equal to him, but Ambrose of Milan
and Basil of Caesarea--why, I don't quarrel with him for making the best
of a bad matter; and a very bad matter it is, boy, and has been ever
since emperors and courtiers have given up burning and crucifying us,
and taken to patronising and bribing us instead.'

Philammon walked on in silence by the old priest's side, stunned and
sickened.... 'And this is what I have come out to see--reeds shaken in
the wind, and men clothed in soft raiment, fit only for kings' palaces!'
For this he had left the dear old Laura, and the simple joys and
friendships of childhood, and cast himself into a roaring whirlpool of
labour and temptation! This was the harmonious strength and unity of
that Church Catholic, in which, as he had been taught from boyhood,
there was but one Lord, one Faith, one Spirit. This was the indivisible
body, 'without spot or wrinkle, which fitly joined together and
compacted by that which every member supplied, according to the
effectual and proportionate working of every part, increased the
body, and enabled it to build itself up in Love!' He shuddered as the
well-known words passed through his memory, and seemed to mock the
base and chaotic reality around him. He felt angry with the old man for
having broken his dream; he longed to believe that his complaints were
only exaggerations of cynic peevishness, of selfish disappointment; and
yet, had not Arsenius warned him? Had he not foretold, word for word,
what the youth would find-what he had found? Then was Saint Paul's great
idea an empty and an impossible dream? No! God's word could not fail;
the Church could not err. The fault could not be in her, but in her
enemies; not, as the old man said, in her too great prosperity, but in
her slavery. And then the words which he had heard from Cyril at their
first interview rose before him as the true explanation. How could the
Church work freely and healthil