hen Monsignor launched out. He had accepted by now the theory
that he had had a lapse of memory, and that so far as his
intellect was concerned, he was practically a man of a century
ago, owing to the history he had happened to be reading shortly
before his collapse; and he talked therefore from that standpoint.

He produced, that is to say, with astonishing fluency all those
arguments that were common in the mouths of the more serious
anti-clericals of the beginning of the century--the increase of
Religious Orders, the domineering tendency of all ecclesiastics
in the enjoyment of temporal power, the impossibility of
combating supernatural arguments, the hostility of the Church to
education--down even to the celibacy of the clergy. He paused for
breath as they turned out of the great gateway.

Father Jervis laughed aloud and patted him on the arm.

"My dear Monsignor, I can't compete with you. You're too
eloquent. Of course, I remember from reading history that those
things used to be said, and I suppose Socialists say them now.
But, you know, no educated man ever dreams of such arguments; nor
indeed do the uneducated! It's the half-educated, as usual, who's
the enemy. He always is. The Wise Men and the shepherds both
knelt in Bethlehem. It was the bourgeois who stood apart."

"That's no answer," persisted the other.

"Well, let's see," said the priest good-humouredly. "We'll begin
with celibacy. Now it's perfectly true that it's thought almost a
disgrace for a man not to have a large family. The average is
certainly not less than ten in civilized nations. But for all
that a priest is looked upon without any contempt at all. Why?
Because he's a spiritual father; because he begets spiritual
children to God, and feeds and nourishes them. Of course to an
atheist this is nonsense; and even to an agnostic it's a very
doubtful benefit. But, my dear Monsignor, you must remember that
these hardly exist amongst us. The entire civilized world of
to-day is as absolutely convinced of Heaven and Grace and the
Church, and the havoc that Sin makes not only as regards the next
world but in this--so absolutely convinced that he understands
perfectly that a priest is far more productive of general good
than a physical father possibly can be. It's the priest who keeps
the whole thing going. Don't you see? And then, in a Catholic
world, the instinct that the man who serves the altar should be
without physical ties--well, that's simp