t of the council, his guards were all about it, and the poor
fanatics and trimmers and schemers disputed nervously with their eyes
on him, disputed about homoousian and homoiousian, and grimaced and
pretended to be very very fierce and exact to hide how much they were
frightened and how little they knew, and because they did not dare to
lay violent hands upon that usurper of the empire of the world....

"And from that day forth the Christian churches have been damned and
lost. Kept churches. Lackey churches. Roman, Russian, Anglican; it
matters not. My church indeed was twice sold, for it doubled the sin of
Nicaea and gave itself over to Henry and Elizabeth while it shammed
a dispute about the sacraments. No one cared really about
transubstantiation any more than the earlier betrayers cared about
consubstantiality; that dispute did but serve to mask the betrayal."

He turned to the listening Angel. "What can you show me of my church
that I do not know? Why! we Anglican bishops get our sees as footmen get
a job. For months Victoria, that old German Frau, delayed me--because of
some tittle-tattle.... The things we are! Snape, who afterwards became
Bishop of Burnham, used to waylay the Prince Consort when he was riding
in Hyde Park and give him, he boasts, 'a good loud cheer,' and then he
would run very fast across the park so as to catch him as he came round,
and do it again.... It is to that sort of thing we bearers of the light
have sunken....

"I have always despised that poor toady," the bishop went on. "And
yet here am I, and God has called me and shown me the light of his
countenance, and for a month I have faltered. That is the mystery of the
human heart, that it can and does sin against the light. What right have
I, who have seen the light--and failed, what right have I--to despise
any other human being? I seem to have been held back by a sort of
paralysis.

"Men are so small, so small still, that they cannot keep hold of the
vision of God. That is why I want to see God again.... But if it were
not for this strange drug that seems for a little while to lift my mind
above the confusion and personal entanglements of every day, I doubt if
even now I could be here. I am here, passionate to hold this moment and
keep the light. As this inspiration passes, I shall go back, I know,
to my home and my place and my limitations. The littleness of men! The
forgetfulness of men! I want to know what my chief duty is, to have