“Your lordship speaks most kindly; but the truth—­”

“Should be spoken as gently as possible when it is calculated to wound, Holland; that is why I trust I am speaking gently now.  Ah, Holland! there are the little children to be considered as well as the Scribes and Pharisees.  There are weaker brethren.  You have heard of the necessity for considering the weaker brethren.”

“I seem to have heard of nothing else since I entered the Church; all the brethren are the weaker brethren.”

“They are; I am one of the weaker brethren myself.  It is all a question of comparison.  I don’t say that your article is likely to have the effect of causing me to join the band of non-church-goers.  I don’t at this moment believe that it will drive me to golf instead of Gospel; but I honestly do believe that it is calculated to do that to hundreds of persons who just now require but the smallest grain of argument to turn the balance of their minds in favor of golf.  Your aim was not in that direction, I’m sure, Holland.”

“My aim was to speak the truth, my lord.”

“In order to achieve a noble object—­the gathering of the stragglers into the fold.”

“That was my motive, my lord.”

“You announce boldly that this old mother of ours is in a moribund condition, in order that you may gather in as many of her scattered children as possible to stand at her bedside?  Ah, my dear Holland! the moribund brings together the wolves and the vultures and all unclean, hungry things to try and get a mouthful off those prostrate limbs of hers—­a mouthful while her flesh is still warm.  I tell you this—­I who have from time to time during the last fifty years heard the howl of the hyena, seen the talons of the vulture at the door of her chamber.  They fancied that the end could not be far off, that no more strength was left in that aged body that lay prone for the moment.  But I have heard the howling wane into the distance and get lost in the outer darkness when the old Church roused herself and went forth to face the snarling teeth—­the eager talons.  There is life in this mighty old mother of ours still.  New life comes to her, not as it did to the fabled hero of old, by contact with the earth, but by communing with heaven.  The bark of the wolf, the snarl of the hyena, may be heard in the debate which the Government have encouraged in the House of Commons on the Church.  Philistia rejoices.  Let the movers in this obscene tumult look to themselves.  Have they the confidence of the people even as the Church has that confidence?  Let them put it to the test.  I tell you, George Holland, the desert and the ditch, whose vomit those men are who now move against us in Parliament, shall receive them once more before many months have passed.  The Church on whom they hoped to prey shall witness their dispersal, never again to return.  I know the signs.  I know what the present silence throughout the country means.  The champion of God and the Church has