'In other words,' he said after a pause, 'God offers you one discipline, and you would choose another. Well, the Lord gave the choice to David of what rod he would be scourged with; but it always has seemed to me that the choice was an added punishment. I would not have chosen. I would have left all to His Divine Majesty! This cross is not of your own making; it comes to you from God. Is it not the most signal proof of His love? He asks of you what only the strongest can bear; gives you just time to serve Him with the best. As I said before, is it not His way of honouring His creature?'
Eleanor sat without speaking, her delicate head drooping.
'And, Madame,' the priest continued with a changed voice, 'you say that creeds and dogmas mean nothing to you. How can I, who am now cast out from the Visible Church, uphold them to you—attempt to bind them on your conscience? But one thing I can do, whether as man or priest; I can bid you ask yourself whether in truth Christ means nothing to you—and Calvary nothing?'
He paused, staring at her with his bright and yet unseeing eyes, the wave of feeling rising within him to a force and power born of recent storm, of the personal wrestling with a personal anguish.
'Why is it'—he resumed, each word low and pleading,—'that this divine figure is enshrined, if not in all our affections—at least in all our imaginations? Why is it that at the heart of this modern world, with all its love of gold, its thirst for knowledge, its desire for pleasure, there still lives and burns '—
—He held out his two strong clenched hands, quivering, as though he held in them the vibrating heart of man—
—'this strange madness of sacrifice, this foolishness of the Cross? Why is it that in these polite and civilised races which lead the world, while creeds and Churches divide us, what still touches us most deeply, what still binds us together most surely, is this story of a hideous death, which the spectators said was voluntary—which the innocent Victim embraced with joy as the ransom of His brethren—from which those who saw it received in very truth the communication of a new life—a life, a Divine Mystery, renewed amongst us now, day after day, in thousands of human beings? What does it mean, Madame? Ask yourself! How has our world of lust and iron produced such a thing? How, except as the clue to the world's secret, is man to explain it to himself? Ah! my daughter, think what you will of the nature and dignity of the Crucified—but turn your eyes to the Cross! Trouble yourself with no creeds—I speak this to your weakness—but sink yourself in the story of the Passion and its work upon the world! Then bring it to bear upon your own case. There is in you a root of evil mind—an angry desire—a cupido which keeps you from God. Lay it down before the Crucified, and rejoice—rejoice!—that you have something to give to your God—before He gives you Himself!'
The old man's voice sank and trembled.
Eleanor made no reply. Her capacity for emotion was suddenly exhausted.
Nerve and brain were tired out.
After a minute or two she rose to her feet and held out her hand.