ss?
May not the type be beloved for the sake of its Antitype, even if
the very name of All-Father is no guarantee for His paternal pity! .
. . But you have had this dream. How know you, that in it you were
not allowed a glimpse, however dim and distant, of Him whom the
Catholics call the Father?'

'It may be; but--'

'Stay again. Had you never the sense of a Spirit in you--a will, an
energy, an inspiration, deeper than the region of consciousness and
reflection, which, like the wind, blew where it listed, and you
heard the sound of it ringing through your whole consciousness, and
yet knew not whence it came, or whither it went, or why it drove you
on to dare and suffer, to love and hate; to be a fighter, a
sportsman, an artist--'

'And a drunkard!' added Lancelot, sadly.

'And a drunkard. But did it never seem to you that this strange
wayward spirit, if anything, was the very root and core of your own
personality? And had you never a craving for the help of some
higher, mightier spirit, to guide and strengthen yours; to regulate
and civilise its savage and spasmodic self-will; to teach you your
rightful place in the great order of the universe around; to fill
you with a continuous purpose and with a continuous will to do it?
Have you never had a dream of an Inspirer?--a spirit of all
spirits?'

Lancelot turned away with a shudder.

'Talk of anything but that! Little you know--and yet you seem to
know everything--the agony of craving with which I have longed for
guidance; the rage and disgust which possessed me when I tried one
pretended teacher after another, and found in myself depths which
their spirits could not, or rather would not, touch. I have been
irreverent to the false, from very longing to worship the true; I
have been a rebel to sham leaders, for very desire to be loyal to a
real one; I have envied my poor cousin his Jesuits; I have envied my
own pointers their slavery to my whip and whistle; I have fled, as a
last resource, to brandy and opium, for the inspiration which
neither man nor demon would bestow. . . . Then I found . . . you
know my story. . . . And when I looked to her to guide and inspire
me, behold! I found myself, by the very laws of humanity, compelled
to guide and inspire her;--blind, to lead the blind!--Thank God, for
her sake, that she was taken from me!'

'Did you ever mistake these substitutes, even the noblest of them,
for the reali