"No, no," cried Ronder eagerly. "I assure you that that is not so. There has been intrigue here owing to the old politics of the party who governed the Cathedral. But that is, I hope and pray, over and done with. It is because so many of us want to have no more of it that we are asking you to come here. Believe me, believe me, that is so."
"I should not have said what I did," continued Wistons quietly. "It was arrogant and conceited. Perhaps you cannot avoid intrigue and party feeling among the community of any Cathedral body. That is why I want you to understand, Canon Ronder, the kind of man I am, before you propose me for this post. I am afraid that you may afterwards regret your advocacy. If I were invited to a Canonry, or any post immediately connected with the Cathedral, I would not accept it for an instant. I come, if I come at all, to fight the Cathedral--that is to fight everything in it, round and about it, that prevents men from seeing clearly the figure of Christ.
"I believe, Canon Ronder, that before many years are out it will become clear to the whole world that there are now two religions--the religion of authority, and the religion of the spirit--and if in such a division I must choose, I am for the religion of the spirit every time."
The religion of the spirit! Ronder stirred, a little restlessly, his fat thighs. What had that to do with it? They were discussing the Pybus appointment. The religion of the spirit! Well, who wasn't for that? As to dogma, Ronder had never laid very great stress upon it. A matter of words very largely. He looked out to the garden, where a tree, scooped now like a great green fan against the blue-white sky, was shading the sun's rays. Lovely! Lovely! Lovely like the Hermes downstairs, lovely like the piece of red amber on his writing-table, like the Blind Homer...like a scallop of green glass holding water that washed a little from side to side, the sheen on its surface changing from dark shadow to faintest dusk. Lovely! He stared, transported, his comfort flowing full-tide now into his soul.
"Exactly!" he said, suddenly turning his eyes full on Wistons. "The Christian Church has made a golden calf of its dogmas. The Calf is worshipped, the Cathedral enshrines it."
Wistons gave a swift curious stab of a glance. Ronder caught it; he flushed. "You think it strange of me to say that?" he asked. "I can see that you do. Let me be frank with you. It has been my trouble all my life that I can see every side of a question. I am with the modernists, but at the same time I can understand how dangerous it must seem to the dogmatists to abandon even an inch of the country that Paul conquered for them. I'm afraid, Wistons, that I see life in terms of men and women rather than of creeds. I want men to be happy and at peace with one another. And if to form a new creed or to abandon an old one leads to men's deeper religious happiness, well, then...." He waved his hands.
Wistons, speaking again as it were to himself, answered, "I care only for Jesus Christ. He is overshadowed now by all the great buildings that men have raised for Him. He is lost to our view; we must recover Him. Him! Him! Only Him! To serve Him, to be near Him, almost to feel the touch of His hand on one's head, that is the whole of life to me. And now He is hard to come to, harder every year...." He got up. "I didn't come to say more than that.
"It's the Cathedral, Ronder, that I fear. Don't you yourself sometimes feel that it has, by now, a spirit of its own, a life, a force that all the past years and all the worship that it has had have given it? Don't you even feel that? That it has become a god demanding his own rites and worshippers? That it uses men for its own purposes, and not for Christ's? That almost it hates Christ? It is so beautiful, so lovely, so haughty, so jealous!
"For I, thy God, am a jealous God.'..." He broke off. "I could love Christ better in that garden than in the Cathedral. Tear it down and build it up again!" He turned restlessly, almost savagely, to Ronder. "Can you be happy and comfortable and at ease, when you see what Christ might be to human beings and what He is? Who thinks of Him, who cares for Him, who loves His sweetness and charity and tenderness? Why is something always in the way, always, always, always? Love! Charity! Doesn't such a place as this Cathedral breed hatred and malice and pride and jealousy? And isn't its very beauty a contempt?...And now what right have you to help my appointment to Pybus?"
Ronder smiled.