"He is here," the bishop knew, "because he could not avoid coming. He
tried to excuse himself. His mother wept. What could he do? But the
church's teaching nowadays fails even to grip the minds of boys."

The rector came to the end of his Preface: "They will evermore endeavour
themselves faithfully to observe such things as they by their own
confession have assented unto."

"Like a smart solicitor pinning them down," said the bishop to himself,
and then roused himself, unrolled the little paper in his hand, leant
forward, and straightway began his first address.

Nowadays it is possible to say very unorthodox things indeed in an
Anglican pulpit unchallenged. There remains no alert doctrinal criticism
in the church congregations. It was possible, therefore, for the bishop
to say all that follows without either hindrance or disturbance. The
only opposition, indeed, came from within, from a sense of dreamlike
incongruity between the place and the occasion and the things that he
found himself delivering.

"All ceremonies," he began, "grow old. All ceremonies are tainted even
from the first by things less worthy than their first intention, and
you, my dear sons and daughters, who have gathered to-day in this worn
and ancient building, beneath these monuments to ancient vanities and
these symbols of forgotten or abandoned theories about the mystery of
God, will do well to distinguish in your minds between what is essential
and what is superfluous and confusing in this dedication you make of
yourselves to God our Master and King. For that is the real thing you
seek to do today, to give yourselves to God. This is your spiritual
coming of age, in which you set aside your childish dependence upon
teachers and upon taught phrases, upon rote and direction, and stand up
to look your Master in the face. You profess a great brotherhood when
you do that, a brotherhood that goes round the earth, that numbers men
of every race and nation and country, that aims to bring God into
all the affairs of this world and make him not only the king of your
individual lives but the king--in place of all the upstarts, usurpers,
accidents, and absurdities who bear crowns and sceptres today--of an
united mankind."

He paused, and in the pause he heard a little rustle as though the
congregation before him was sitting up in its places, a sound that
always nerves and reassures an experienced preacher.

"This, my dear children, is the reality of t