ourself into the grave over a thing you can't help."

"There is one solution and one only, my friends," said the blonde
Norman; "the Church...." He sat up straight in his chair, speaking
slowly with expressionless face. "People are too weak and too kindly to
shift for themselves. Government of some sort there must be. Lay
Government has proved through all the tragic years of history to be
merely a ruse of the strong to oppress the weak, of the wicked to fool
the confiding. There remains only religion. In the organisation of
religion lies the natural and suitable arrangement for the happiness of
man. The Church will govern not through physical force but through
spiritual force."

"The force of fear." Lully jumped to his feet impatiently, making the
bottles sway on the table.

"The force of love.... I once thought as you do, my friend," said the
Norman, pulling Lully back into his chair with a smile.

Lully drank a glass of champagne greedily and undid the buttons of his
blue jacket.

"Go on," he said; "it's madness."

"All the evil of the Church," went on the Norman's even voice, "comes
from her struggles to attain supremacy. Once assured of triumph,
established as the rule of the world, it becomes the natural channel
through which the wise rule and direct the stupid, not for their own
interest, not for ambition for worldly things, but for the love that is
in them. The freedom the Church offers is the only true freedom. It
denies the world, and the slaveries and rewards of it. It gives the love
of God as the only aim of life."

"But think of the Church to-day, the cardinals at Rome, the Church
turned everywhere to the worship of tribal gods...."

"Yes, but admit that that can be changed. The Church has been supreme in
the past; can it not again be supreme? All the evil comes from the
struggle, from the compromise. Picture to yourself for a moment a world
conquered by the Church, ruled through the soul and mind, where force
will not exist, where instead of all the multitudinous tyrannies man has
choked his life with in organising against other men, will exist the one
supreme thing, the Church of God. Instead of many hatreds, one love.
Instead of many slaveries, one freedom."

"A single tyranny, instead of a million. What's the choice?" cried
Lully.

"But you are both violent, my children." Merrier got to his feet and
smilingly filled the glasses all round. "You go at the matter too much
from the heroic point