"If both are admitted," suggested the Prime Minister, "will they not tend to correct each other? We study history by allowing all sides to be stated, and we admit to its chair both schools, the scientists and the rhetoricians. Why, then, should not theology be studied on the same broad lines?"
"Will the chair of theology become a more stable institution," inquired the Archbishop, "by being turned into a see-saw?"
The Prime Minister smiled on the illustration, but his answer was edged with bitterness.
"That is a way of securing some movement at all events," he remarked caustically.
"The Church," retorted his Grace, "denies the need of such movement. Her firm foundations—we have scriptural warrant for saying—are upon rock. She is neither a traveling menagerie, a swingboat, nor a merry-go-round."
"Yet I have heard," said the Prime Minister, "that she takes a ship to be her symbol, and one, in particular, very specially designed to be a traveling menagerie—containing all kinds both clean and unclean."
"The unclean," said the Archbishop, "were by divine dispensation placed in a decisive minority."
"Yet they shared, I suppose, the provisions of the establishment?"
"They did not, I imagine, sit down at the table with the patriarch and his family."
"Perhaps the dogs ate of the crumbs?"