rivate ambition, and that woman's proud looks; and who had
stayed for the Eucharist the Sun-day before, and who had gone out after
the sermon; and how the majority who did not stay could possibly dare to
go, and how the minority who did not go could possibly dare to stay....
Endless suspicions, sneers, complaints.... what did they care for the
eternal glories and the beatific vision? Their one test for all men and
things, from the patriarch to the prefect, seemed to be--did he or it
advance the cause of the Church?--which Philammon soon discovered to
mean their own cause, their influence, their self-glorification. And the
poor boy, as his faculty for fault-finding quickened under the influence
of theirs, seemed to see under the humble stock-phrases in which they
talked of their labours of love, and the future reward of their present
humiliations, a deep and hardly-bidden pride, a faith in their
own infallibility, a contemptuous impatience of every man, however
venerable, who differed from their party on any, the slightest, matter.
They spoke with sneers of Augustine's Latinising tendencies, and with
open execrations of Chrysostom, as the vilest and most impious of
schismatics; and, for aught Philammon knew, they were right enough. But
when they talked of wars and desolation past and impending, without a
word of pity for the slain and ruined, as a just judgment of Heaven
upon heretics and heathens; when they argued over the awful struggle
for power which, as he gathered from their words, was even then pending
between the Emperor and the Count of Africa, as if it contained but one
question of interest to them--would Cyril, and they as his bodyguard,
gain or lose power in Alexandria? and lastly, when at some mention of
Orestes, and of Hypatia as his counsellor, they broke out into open
imprecations of God's curse, and comforted themselves with the prospect
of everlasting torment for both; he shuddered and asked himself
involuntarily--were these the ministers of a Gospel?--were these the
fruits of Christ's Spirit?.... And a whisper thrilled through the inmost
depth of his soul--'Is there a Gospel? Is there a Spirit of Christ?
Would not their fruits be different from these?'

Faint, and low, and distant, was that whisper, like the mutter of an
earthquake miles below the soil. And yet, like the earthquake-roll, it
had in that one moment jarred every belief, and hope, and memory of his
being each a hair's-breadth from its place