Page:The Soul of a Bishop.djvu/185

upon the eternal persistence of the essential Religious Fact:

ΜΗ ΦΟΒΟΥ
ΕΓΩ ΕΙΜΙ Ο ΠΡΩΤΟΣ ΚΑΙ Ο ΕΣΧΑΤΟΣ
ΚΑΙ Ο ΖΩΝ^[1]

And these promises which, even if we are not to take them as promises in the exact sense in which, let us say, the payment of five sovereigns is promised by a five-pound note, are yet assertions of practically inevitable veracity:

Ο ΕΝΑΡΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ . . . ΕΠΙΤΕΛΕΣΕΙ^[2]
ΕΠΙΦΑΥΣΕΙ^[3]

The old man had written his Greek tags in shakily resolute capitals. It was his custom always to quote the Greek Testament in his letters, never the English version. It is a practice not uncommon with the more scholarly of our bishops. It is as if some eminent scientific man were to insist upon writing H₂O instead of "water," and "sodium chloride" instead of "table salt" in his private correspondence. Or upon hanging up a stuffed crocodile in his hall to give the place tone. The Bishop of Princhester construed these brief dicta without serious exertion, he found them very congenial texts, but there were

1. Rev. i. 18. "Fear not. I am the First and Last thing, the Living thing."
2. Phil. i. 6. "He who began... will perfect."
3. Eph. v. 14. "He will illuminate."