h
they so solemnly command, and agree with me, that it is because the
song preaches this that it has a right to take its place among the holy
writings? You, as a Christian bishop, should know what answer such a man
would receive.... You are silent? Then I will tell you what answer
he seemed to receive in my dream. "O blasphemous and carnal man, who
pervertest Holy Scripture into a cloak for thine own licentiousness, as
if it spoke of man's base and sensual affections, know that this book is
to be spiritually interpreted of the marriage between the soul and its
Creator, and that it is from this very book that the Catholic Church
derives her strongest arguments in favour of holy virginity, and the
glories of a celibate life."'

Synesius was still silent.

'And what do you think I saw in my dream that that man did when he found
these Christians enforcing, as a necessary article of practice, as well
as of faith, a baseless and bombastic metaphor, borrowed from that very
Neo-Platonism out of which he had just fled for his life? He cursed the
day he was born, and the hour in which his father was told, "Thou hast
gotten a man-child," and said, "Philosophers, Jews, and Christians,
farewell for ever and a day! The clearest words of your most sacred
books mean anything or nothing' as the case may suit your fancies; and
there is neither truth nor reason under the sun. What better is there
for a man, than to follow the example of his people, and to turn usurer,
and money-getter, and cajoler of fools in his turn, even as his father
was before him?"'

Synesius remained a while in deep thought, and at last-- 'And yet you
came to me?'

'I did, because you have loved and married; because you have stood out
manfully against this strange modern insanity, and refused to give up,
when you were made a bishop, the wife whom God had given you. You, I
thought, could solve the riddle for me, if any man could.'

'Alas, friend! I have begun to distrust, of late, my power of solving
riddles. After all, why should they be solved? What matters one more
mystery in a world of mysteries? "If thou marry, thou hast not sinned,"
are St. Paul's own words; and let them be enough for us. Do not ask me
to argue with you, but to help you. Instead of puzzling me with deep
questions, and tempting me to set up my private judgment, as I have
done too often already, against the opinion of the Church, tell me your
story, and test my sympathy rather than my inte