im, and it was as if God
was passing away from him. He fell swiftly down from the heaven
of self-forgetfulness to a grotesque, pathetic and earthly
self-consciousness.

He became acutely aware of his episcopal livery. And that God was
passing away from him.

It was as if God was passing, and as if the bishop was unable to rise up
and follow him.

Then it was as if God had passed, and as if the bishop was in headlong
pursuit of him and in a great terror lest he should be left behind. And
he was surely being left behind.

He discovered that in some unaccountable way his gaiters were loose;
most of their buttons seemed to have flown off, and his episcopal
sash had slipped down about his feet. He was sorely impeded. He kept
snatching at these things as he ran, in clumsy attempts to get them off.

At last he had to stop altogether and kneel down and fumble with the
last obstinate button.

"Oh God!" he cried, "God my captain! Wait for me! Be patient with me!"

And as he did so God turned back and reached out his hand. It was indeed
as if he stood and smiled. He stood and smiled as a kind man might do;
he dazzled and blinded his worshipper, and yet it was manifest that he
had a hand a man might clasp.

Unspeakable love and joy irradiated the whole being of the bishop as he
seized God's hand and clasped it desperately with both his own. It was
as if his nerves and arteries and all his substance were inundated with
golden light....

It was again as if he merged with God and became God....

CHAPTER THE SIXTH - EXEGETICAL

(1)

WITHOUT any sense of transition the bishop found himself seated in the
little North Library of the Athenaeum club and staring at the bust of
John Wilson Croker. He was sitting motionless and musing deeply. He was
questioning with a cool and steady mind whether he had seen a vision
or whether he had had a dream. If it had been a dream it had been an
extraordinarily vivid and convincing dream. He still seemed to be in the
presence of God, and it perplexed him not at all that he should also
be in the presence of Croker. The feeling of mental rottenness and
insecurity that had weakened his thought through the period of his
illness, had gone. He was secure again within himself.

It did not seem to matter fundamentally whether it was an experience of
things without or of things within him that had happened to him. It was
clear to him that much that he had seen was at most expressive, that