"Oh yes," said Father Payne, "that's another matter. We have to work hard,
and put the best of ourselves into what we do. I don't want you to be an
amiable dilettante. But I also want you to see past even the best art. You
mustn't think that the stained-glass window is the body of heaven in its
clearness. The sort of worshippers I object to are the men who shut
themselves up in a church, and what with the colour and the music and the
incense-smoke, think they are in heaven already. It's an intoxication, all
that. I don't get you men to come here to make you drunk, but to get you to
loathe drunkenness. God--that's the end of it all! God, who reveals Himself
in beauty and kindness, and trustfulness, and charm and interest, and in a
hundred pure and fine forces--yet each of them are but avenues which lead
up to Him, the streets of the city, full of living water. But it is
movement I am in search of--and I would rather be drowned in the depth of
the sea than mislead anyone, or help him to sit still. I have made an awful
row about it all," said Father Payne, relapsing into a milder mood--"But
you will forgive me, I know. I can't bear to see these worthy men blocking
the way with their unassailable, unabridged, authentic editions. They are
like barbed-wire entanglements: and the worst of it is that, in spite of
all their holy air of triumph, they enjoy few things more than tripping
each other up! They condemn each other to eternal perdition for misplacing
a date or misspelling a name. It's like getting into a bed of nettles to
get in among these little hierophants. They remind me of the bishops at
some ancient Church Council or other who tore the clothes off two right
reverend consultants, and literally pulled them limb from limb in the name
of Christ. That's the end of these holy raptures, my boy! They unchain the
beast within."

LXII

OF CONSISTENCY

There had been a little vague talk about politics, and someone had quoted a
definition of a true Liberal as a man who, if he had only to press a button
in a dark room to annihilate all cranks, faddists, political quacks,
extremists, propagandists, and nostrum-mongers, would not dream of doing
so, as a matter of conscience, on the ground that everyone has a right to
hold his own beliefs and to persuade the world to accept them if he can.
Father Payne laughed at this; but Rose, who had been nettled, I fancy, at a
lack of deference for his political experience, his fathe