His chief task was to finish his two addresses for the confirmation services of the day.  He read over his notes, and threw them aside and remained for a time thinking deeply.  The Greek tags at the end of Likeman’s letter came into his thoughts; they assumed a quality of peculiar relevance to this present occasion.  He repeated the words:  “Epitelesei.  Epiphausei.”

He took his little Testament to verify them.  After some slight trouble he located the two texts.  The first, from Philippians, ran in the old version, “He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it”; the second was expressed thus:  “Christ shall give thee light.”  He was dissatisfied with these renderings and resorted to the revised version, which gave “perfect” instead of “perform,” and “shall shine upon you” for “give thee light.”  He reflected profoundly for a time.

Then suddenly his addresses began to take shape in his mind, and these little points lost any significance.  He began to write rapidly, and as he wrote he felt the Angel stood by his right hand and read and approved what he was writing.  There were moments when his mind seemed to be working entirely beyond his control.  He had a transitory questioning whether this curious intellectual automatism was not perhaps what people meant by “inspiration.”

(11)

The bishop had always been sensitive to the secret fount of pathos that is hidden in the spectacle of youth.  Long years ago when he and Lady Ella had been in Florence he had been moved to tears by the beauty of the fresh-faced eager Tobit who runs beside the great angel in the picture of Botticelli.  And suddenly and almost as uncontrollably, that feeling returned at the sight of the young congregation below him, of all these scores of neophytes who were gathered to make a public acknowledgment of God.  The war has invested all youth now with the shadow of tragedy; before it came many of us were a little envious of youth and a little too assured of its certainty of happiness.  All that has changed.  Fear and a certain tender solicitude mingle in our regard for every child; not a lad we pass in the street but may presently be called to face such pain and stress and danger as no ancient hero ever knew.  The patronage, the insolent condescension of age, has vanished out of the world.  It is dreadful to look upon the young.

He stood surveying the faces of the young people as the rector read the Preface to the confirmation service.  How simple they were, how innocent!  Some were a little flushed by the excitement of the occasion; some a little pallid.  But they were all such tender faces, so soft in outline, so fresh and delicate in texture and colour.  They had soft credulous mouths.  Some glanced sideways at one another; some listened with a forced intentness.  The expression of one good-looking boy, sitting in a corner scat, struck the bishop as being curiously defiant.  He stood very erect, he blinked his eyes as though they smarted, his lips were compressed bitterly.  And then it seemed to the bishop that the Angel stood beside him and gave him understanding.