"The Divine model endures—yes!" he murmured—"The Divine foundation remains firm, but the human building totters and is insecure to the point of utter falling and destruction!" Here, opening his eyes, he gazed dreamily at the pictured face of the Madonna above him. "Walden, it is useless to contend with facts, and the facts are, that the masses of mankind are as unregenerate at this day as ever they were before Christ came into the world! The Church is powerless to stem the swelling tide of human crime and misery. The Church in these days has become merely a harbour of refuge for hypocrites who think to win conventional repute with their neighbours, by affecting to believe in a religion not one of whose tenets they obey! Blasphemy, rank blasphemy, Walden! It is bad enough in all conscience to cheat one's neighbour, but an open attempt to cheat the Creator of the Universe is the blackest crime of all, though it be unnamed in the criminal calendar!"
He uttered these words with intense passion, rising from his seat, and walking up and down the room as he spoke. Walden watched his restless passing to and fro, with a wistful look in his honest eyes. Presently he said, smiling a little—
"You are my Bishop—and I should not presume to differ from you, Brent! YOU must instruct ME,—not I you! Yet if I may speak from my own experience—-"
"You may and you shall!"—replied Brent, swiftly—"But think for a moment, before you speak, of what that experience has been! One great grief has clouded your life—the loss of your sister. After that, what has been your lot? A handful of simple souls set under your charge, in the loveliest of little villages,—souls that love you, trust you and obey you. Compared to this, take MY daily life! An over-populated diocese—misery and starvation on all sides,—men working for mere pittances,—women prostituting themselves to obtain food—children starving—girls ruined in their teens—and over it all, my wretched self, a leading representative of the Church which can do nothing to remedy these evils! And worse than all, a Church in which some of the clergy themselves who come under my rule and dominance are more dishonourable and dissolute than many of the so- called 'reprobates' of society whom they are elected to admonish! I tell you, Walden, I have some men under my jurisdiction whom I should like to see soundly flogged!—only I am powerless to order the castigation—and some others who ought to be serving seven years in penal servitude instead of preaching virtue to people a thousand times more virtuous than themselves!"
"I quite believe that!" said Walden, smiling—"I know one of them!"
The Bishop glanced at him, and laughed.
"You mean Putwood Leveson?" he said—"He seems a mischievous fool— but I don't suppose there is any real harm in him, is there?"
"Real harm?"—and John flared up in a blaze of wrath—"He is the most pernicious scoundrel that ever masqueraded in the guise of a Christian!"
The Bishop paused in his walk up and down, and clasping his hands behind his back, an old habit of his, looked quizzically at his friend. A smile, kindly and almost boyish, lightened the grey pallor of his worn face.
"Why, John!" he said—"you are actually in a temper! Your mental attitude is evidently that of squared fists and 'Come on!' What has roused the slumbering lion, eh?"