of the Island of
Pharos from which it sprang. It was noonday, and the sunshine lay like
a veil of gold over all.

The Patriarch's thoughts were wandering in the past. He had been
celebrating the anniversary of his holy predecessor Peter, the
previous Bishop, who had won the crown of martyrdom during the
terrible persecution of the Christians not so many years before.
Several of the clergy present had come from afar to assist at the
festival, and these were to be his expected guests.

The time of suffering was past and over, and yet it seemed to
Alexander as if it had all happened yesterday and might happen again
tomorrow. There stood the great palace of the Caesars, where the pagan
emperor had sat in judgment upon the lambs of Christ's flock; there
the famous temple of Serapis, where the Christians had been dragged to
offer incense to the gods; there the amphitheater where they had been
torn to pieces by beasts and slain with the sword for confessing the
Name of Christ. And all through those dark days, firm and steadfast as
the lighthouse on the cliffs of Pharos, had stood the Patriarch Peter,
a tower of strength and comfort to his persecuted children.

A hundred Bishops and more had looked to him as their head, for the
See of Alexandria in the East was second only to that of Rome in the
West, and the burden of responsibility was heavy. But, thanks to the
example of its chief, the Church in Egypt had borne the trial bravely,
and if some had quailed before the torture and the rack and had fallen
away, by far the greater number had been true. Even the unheroic
souls, who had loved their lives better than their God, had not been
lost beyond hope, for they had come back during the lulls in the
storm, begging to be absolved from their sin. And Peter, mindful of
his Master's words that he should not quench the smoking flax nor
break the bruised reed, received them back, after they had done
penance, into the fold of Christ with mercy and compassion.

There were some who had not scrupled to protest against such mercy.
"Were these apostates," cried Meletius, Bishop of Lykopolis, "to be
made equal to those who had borne the burden and the heat of the day?"
And he had rebelled against the decision of the Patriarch and made a
schism in the Church. Even the martyrdom of the holy Peter had not
brought him back to his allegiance: the Meletians were rebels still,
to the crying scandal of Christians and pagans alike.

They were a