He paused.

“It doesn’t matter at all,” and old Likeman waved it aside.

“Not at all,” he confirmed, waving again.

“I spoke of the whole church of Christ on earth,” he went on.  “These things, these Victorias and Edwards and so on, are temporary accidents—­just as the severance of an Anglican from a Roman communion and a Greek orthodox communion are temporary accidents.  You will remark that wise men in all ages have been able to surmount the difficulty of these things.  Why?  Because they knew that in spite of all these splits and irregularities and defacements—­like the cracks and crannies and lichens on a cathedral wall—­the building held good, that it was shelter and security.  There is no other shelter and security.  And so I come to your problem.  Suppose it is true that you have this incidental vision of the militant aspect of God, and he isn’t, as you see him now that is,—­he isn’t like the Trinity, he isn’t like the Creed, he doesn’t seem to be related to the Church, then comes the question, are you going out for that?  And whither do you go if you do go out?  The Church remains.  We alter doctrines not by changing the words but by shifting the accent.  We can under-accentuate below the threshold of consciousness.”

“But can we?”

“We do.  Where’s Hell now?  Eighty years ago it warmed the whole Church.  It was—­as some atheist or other put it the other day—­the central heating of the soul.  But never mind that point now.  Consider the essential question, the question of breaking with the church.  Ask yourself, whither would you go?  To become an oddity!  A Dissenter.  A Negative.  Self emasculated.  The spirit that denies.  You would just go out.  You would just cease to serve Religion.  That would be all.  You wouldn’t do anything.  The Church would go on; everything else would go on.  Only you would be lost in the outer wilderness.

“But then—­”

Old Likeman leant forward and pointed a bony finger.  “Stay in the Church and modify it.  Bring this new light of yours to the altar.”

There was a little pause.

“No man,” the bishop thought aloud, “putteth new wine into old bottles.”

Old Likeman began to speak and had a fit of coughing.  “Some of these texts—­whuff, whuff—­like a conjuror’s hat—­whuff—­make ’em—­fit anything.”

A man-servant appeared and handed a silver box of lozenges into which the old bishop dipped with a trembling hand.

“Tricks of that sort,” he said, “won’t do, Scrope—­among professionals.

“And besides,” he was inspired; “true religion is old wine—­as old as the soul.

“You are a bishop in the Church of Christ on Earth,” he summed it up.  “And you want to become a detached and wandering Ancient Mariner from your shipwreck of faith with something to explain—­that nobody wants to hear.  You are going out I suppose you have means?”

The old man awaited the answer to his abrupt enquiry with a handful of lozenges.