The Bishop looked at him with a smile.

“You always speak straight out, John!” he said—­“You always did!  And strange to say, I like you all the better for it.  I could, if I chose, both reprove and command you—­but I will do neither.  You must take your own way, as you always have done.  But there is a flavour of Rome even in your little church of St. Rest,—­your miracle shrine,—­your unknown saint in the alabaster coffin.  You and your parishioners kneel before that every Sunday.”

“True—­but we do not kneel to it,—­nor do we pray through It,”—­ replied Walden—­“It stays in the chancel because it was found in the chancel.  But it does not make a miracle shrine’ as you say,—­there is nothing miraculous about it.”

“If it contains the body of a Saint,”—­said the Bishop, slowly—­“it must be miraculous!  If, in the far-gone centuries, the prayers and tears of sorrowful human beings have bedewed that cold stone, some efficacy, some tenderness, some vitality, born of these prayers and tears, must yet remain!  Walden, we preach the supernatural—­do we not believe in it?”

“The Divine supernatural—­yes!” answered Walden,—­“But—–­” The Bishop interrupted him by a gesture of his delicate hand.

“There are no ‘buts’ in the matter, John,”—­he said, quietly—­“What is supernatural is so by its own nature.  The Divine is the Human, the Human is the Divine.  In all and through all things the Spirit moves and makes its way.  Our earth and ourselves are but particles of matter, worked by the spirit or essence of creative force.  This spirit we can neither see nor touch, therefore we call it super-natural.  But it permeates all things,—­the stone as completely as the flower.  It circulates through that alabaster sarcophagus in your church, as easily as through your own living veins.  Hence, as I say, if the mortal remains of a saint are enshrined within that reliquary, the spirit or ‘soul’ enveloping it may work ‘miracles,’ for all we dare to know!” He paused, and looking kindly at Walden’s grave and somewhat troubled face, added—­“Some day, when we are in very desperate straits, John, we will am what your saint can do for us!”

He smiled.  Walden returned the smile, but nevertheless was conscious of a sorrowful sense of regret at what he considered his friend’s leaning toward superstitious observances and idolatrous ceremonies.  At the same time he well knew that any violent opposition on the subject would be worse than useless in the Bishop’s present mood.  He therefore contented himself with, as he mentally said, ’putting in the thin end of the wedge’—­and,—­carefully steering clear of all controversial matters,—­contrived in a great measure to reassert the old magnetic sway he had been wont to exercise over Brent’s more pliable mind when at college—­so that before they parted, he had obtained from him a solemn promise that there should be no ‘secession’ or even preparation for secession to Rome, till six months had elapsed.