n those of Europe
or Syria, and right Catholic ones, too. But, shall I tell you what
they are singing? "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and
hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with
good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away." Is there no
life, think you, in those words, spoken here every afternoon in the
name of God?'

'By hirelings, who neither care nor understand--'

'Hush. Be not hasty with imputations of evil, within walls
dedicated to and preserved by the All-good. Even should the
speakers forget the meaning of their own words, to my sense,
perhaps, that may just now leave the words more entirely God's. At
all events, confess that whatever accidental husks may have
clustered round it, here is a germ of Eternal Truth. No, I dare not
despair of you English, as long as I hear your priesthood forced by
Providence, even in spite of themselves, thus to speak God's words
about an age in which the condition of the poor, and the rights and
duties of man, are becoming the rallying-point for all thought and
all organisation.'

'But does it not make the case more hopeless that such words have
been spoken for centuries, and no man regards them?'

'You have to blame for that the people, rather than the priest. As
they are, so will he be, in every age and country. He is but the
index which the changes of their spiritual state move up and down
the scale: and as they will become in England in the next half
century, so will he become also.'

'And can these dry bones live?' asked Lancelot, scornfully.

'Who are you to ask? What were you three months ago? for I know
well your story. But do you remember what the prophet saw in the
Valley of Vision? How first that those same dry bones shook and
clashed together, as if uneasy because they were disorganised; and
how they then found flesh and stood upright: and yet there was no
life in them, till at last the Spirit came down and entered into
them? Surely there is shaking enough among the bones now! It is
happening to the body of your England as it did to Adam's after he
was made. It lay on earth, the rabbis say, forty days before the
breath of life was put into it, and the devil came and kicked it;
and it sounded hollow, as England is doing now; but that did not
prevent the breath of life coming in good time, nor will it in
England's case.'

Lancelot looked at him with a puzzled face.