life, but perhaps it was only in recent years that his faith had been put to any really severe tests. It had been sheltered and unchallenged.
"This fearful wa'," Lady Sunderbund interjected.
But Princhester had been a critical and trying change, and "The Light under the Altar" case had ploughed him deeply. It was curious that his doubts always seemed to have a double strand; there was a moral objection based on the church's practical futility and an intellectual strand subordinated to this which traced that futility largely to its unconvincing formulæ.
"And yet you know," said the bishop, "I find I can't go with Chasters. He beats at the church; he treats her as though she were wrong. I feel like a son, growing up, who finds his mother isn't quite so clear-spoken nor quite so energetic as she seemed to be once. She's right, I feel sure. I've never doubted her fundamental goodness."
"Yes," said Lady Sunderbund, very eagerly, "yes."
"And yet there's this futility.... You know, my dear lady, I don't know what to do. One feels on the one hand, that here is a cloud of witnesses, great men, sainted men, subtle men, figures permanently historical, before whom one can do nothing but bow down in the utmost humility, here is a great instrument and organization—what would the world be without the witness of the church?—and on the other hand here are our masses out of hand and hostile, our industrial leaders equally hostile; there
