here is one open door in our parish which
witnesses to the fact that the power and solace of religion are not
shut in within the confines of only two hours of one day in the week.

While I yet stood in the highway there came forth from the little
chapel an honoured parishioner, who is passing the golden evening of a
useful life in researches regarding Calvin and the Pope. Amazement
possessed me, for he is a power in the parish church, whose door is
locked and barred. We walked together towards the hills. There was a
trace of apology in his explanation. Since this dreadful cataclysm has
burst and the boom of the guns has come drifting from the sea across
the high-perched city, he has felt the need of quiet meditation. Thus
he has often on his walks slipped through the open door of the chapel
that stands by the roadside.

"And you have locked the door of the parish church," I exclaimed, "and
you deny to the poor the privilege you yourself enjoy." He stopped and
faced me in the roadway, blinking at me. "We never locked the Church
door," he said. "It used to be open," I answered; "I remember being
glad to sit in it myself." "Oh! I remember," he exclaimed, "it was
open every day for a few years, but the authorities were never
consulted when it was thrown open--a most lawless proceeding!--and when
a suitable opportunity occurred the beadle locked it up. Law and order
have to be vindicated."

"What you did then," I replied, "was to allow the beadle to deprive the
poor parishioners of a privilege which you and a few others enjoy
elsewhere." At that he started off walking along the road very
quickly, but I kept step with him. "You see," said he, waving a
deprecatory hand, "I am only one among many, and I was so absorbed in
these old Reformation controversies that I never gave it a thought, and
it is only since the war began that I realised...." And as he spoke I
felt that my old friend, learned in many controversies, had experienced
a revolution. The great tide had swept him past all controversies
right up to the fountain head. He had learned that man's high calling
is not to dispute, but to pray.

As we walked under the darkling hills I told him of that shadow which
had so suddenly fallen upon me that day, and he at once gave it a name.
"It is the shadow of the Cross," said he. And thereupon he began to
explain out of the wisdom and ripened experience of seventy years how
across nineteen centuries the shado