“Your spirituality seems as thin as a mist.  Do you really believe—­anything?”

“Everything!” said Likeman emphatically, sitting up with a transitory vigour.  “Everything we two have ever professed together.  I believe that the creeds of my church do express all that can possibly be expressed in the relationship of—­That”—­he made a comprehensive gesture with a twist of his hand upon its wrist—­“to the human soul.  I believe that they express it as well as the human mind can express it.  Where they seem to be contradictory or absurd, it is merely that the mystery is paradoxical.  I believe that the story of the Fall and of the Redemption is a complete symbol, that to add to it or to subtract from it or to alter it is to diminish its truth; if it seems incredible at this point or that, then simply I admit my own mental defect.  And I believe in our Church, Scrope, as the embodied truth of religion, the divine instrument in human affairs.  I believe in the security of its tradition, in the complete and entire soundness of its teaching, in its essential authority and divinity.”

He paused, and put his head a little on one side and smiled sweetly.  “And now can you say I do not believe?”

“But the historical Christ, the man Jesus?”

“A life may be a metaphor.  Why not?  Yes, I believe it all.  All.”

The Bishop of Princhester was staggered by this complete acceptance.  “I see you believe all you profess,” he said, and remained for a moment or so rallying his forces.

“Your vision—­if it was a vision—­I put it to you, was just some single aspect of divinity,” said Likeman.  “We make a mistake in supposing that Heresy has no truth in it.  Most heresies are only a disproportionate apprehension of some essential truth.  Most heretics are men who have suddenly caught a glimpse through the veil of some particular verity....  They are dazzled by that aspect.  All the rest has vanished....  They are obsessed.  You are obsessed clearly by this discovery of the militancy of God.  God the Son—­as Hero.  And you want to go out to the simple worship of that one aspect.  You want to go out to a Dissenter’s tent in the wilderness, instead of staying in the Great Temple of the Ages.”

Was that true?

For some moments it sounded true.

The Bishop of Princhester sat frowning and looking at that.  Very far away was the vision now of that golden Captain who bade him come.  Then at a thought the bishop smiled.

“The Great Temple of the Ages,” he repeated.  “But do you remember the trouble we had when the little old Queen was so pigheaded?”

“Oh!  I remember, I remember,” said Likeman, smiling with unshaken confidence.  “Why not?”

“For sixty years all we bishops in what you call the Great Temple of the Ages, were appointed and bullied and kept in our places by that pink irascible bit of dignity.  I remember how at the time I didn’t dare betray my boiling indignation even to you—­I scarcely dared admit it to myself....”