“St. Rest!” repeated the Bishop, musingly—­“What a sweet name it is--what a still sweeter suggestion!  Rest—­rest!—­and a saint’s rest too!—­that perfect rest granted to all the martyrs for Christ!—­how safe and peaceful!—­how sure and glorious!  Would that such rest were mine!  But I see nothing ahead of me but storm and turmoil, and stress of anguish and heartbreak, ending in—­Nothingness!”

Walden bent a little more forward and looked his friend full in the eyes.

“What is wrong, Harry?” he asked, with exceeding gentleness.

At the old schoolboy name of bygone years, Brent caught and pressed his hand with strong fervour.  A smile lighted his eyes.

“John, my boy, everything is wrong!” he said—­“As wrong as ever my work at college was, before you set it right.  Do you think I forget!  Everything is wrong, I tell you!  I am wrong,—­my thoughts are wrong,—­and my conscience leaves me no peace day or night!  I ought not to be a Bishop—­for I feel that the Church itself is wrong!”

John sat quiet for a minute.  Then he said—­

“So it is in many ways.  The Church is a human attempt to build humanity up on a Divine model, and it has its human limitations.  But the Divine model endures!”

Brent threw himself back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“The Divine model endures—­yes!” he murmured—­“The Divine foundation remains firm, but the human building totters and is insecure to the point of utter falling and destruction!” Here, opening his eyes, he gazed dreamily at the pictured face of the Madonna above him.  “Walden, it is useless to contend with facts, and the facts are, that the masses of mankind are as unregenerate at this day as ever they were before Christ came into the world!  The Church is powerless to stem the swelling tide of human crime and misery.  The Church in these days has become merely a harbour of refuge for hypocrites who think to win conventional repute with their neighbours, by affecting to believe in a religion not one of whose tenets they obey!  Blasphemy, rank blasphemy, Walden!  It is bad enough in all conscience to cheat one’s neighbour, but an open attempt to cheat the Creator of the Universe is the blackest crime of all, though it be unnamed in the criminal calendar!”

He uttered these words with intense passion, rising from his seat, and walking up and down the room as he spoke.  Walden watched his restless passing to and fro, with a wistful look in his honest eyes.  Presently he said, smiling a little—­

“You are my Bishop—­and I should not presume to differ from you, Brent!  You must instruct me,—­not I you!  Yet if I may speak from my own experience—–­”