“I could quote you a score of instances to establish that this simple universalism was also the teaching of Christ.  But now I will only remind you that it was Mary who went to her lord simply, who was commended, and not Martha who troubled about many things.  Learn from the Mary of Faith and not from these Marthas of the Creeds.  Let us abandon the presumptions of an ignorant past.  The perfection of doctrine is not for finite men.  Give yourselves to God.  Give yourselves to God.  Not to churches and uses, but to God.  To God simply.  He is the first word of religion and the last.  He is Alpha; he is Omega.  Epitelesei; it is He who will finish the good work begun.”

The bishop ended his address in a vivid silence.  Then he began his interrogation.

“Do you here, in the presence of God, and of this congregation, renew the solemn promise and vow that was made in your name at your Baptism; ratifying and confirming the same in your own persons, and acknowledging yourselves—­”

He stopped short.  The next words were:  “bound to believe and do all those things, which your Godfathers and Godmothers then undertook for you.”

He could not stand those words.  He hesitated, and then substituted:  “acknowledge yourselves to be the true servants of the one God, who is the Lord of Mankind?”

For a moment silence hung in the cathedral.  Then one voice, a boy’s voice, led a ragged response.  “I do.”

Then the bishop:  “Our help is in the Name of the Lord.”

The congregation answered doubtfully, with a glance at its prayer books: 
“Who hath made heaven and earth.”

The bishop:  “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

The congregation said with returning confidence:  “Henceforth, world without end.”

(12)

Before his second address the bishop had to listen to Veni Creator Spiritus, in its English form, and it seemed to him the worst of all possible hymns.  Its defects became monstrously exaggerated to his hypersensitive mind.  It impressed him in its Englished travesty as a grotesque, as a veritable Charlie Chaplin among hymns, and in truth it does stick out most awkward feet, it misses its accusatives, it catches absurdly upon points of abstruse doctrine.  The great Angel stood motionless and ironical at the bishop’s elbow while it was being sung.  “Your church,” he seemed to say.

“We must end this sort of thing,” whispered the bishop.  “We must end this sort of thing—­absolutely.”  He glanced at the faces of the singers, and it became beyond all other things urgent, that he should lift them once for all above the sectarian dogmatism of that hymn to a simple vision of God’s light....

He roused himself to the touching business of the laying on of hands.  While he did so the prepared substance of his second address was running through his mind.  The following prayer and collects he read without difficulty, and so came to his second address.  His disposition at first was explanatory.