his is not urged here with any notion of proving that the tale of
the thorn is not a myth; as I have said, it probably is a myth. It is
urged with the much more important object of pointing out the proper
attitude towards such myths.. The proper attitude is one of doubt
and hope and of a kind of light mystery. The tale is certainly not
impossible; as it is certainly not certain. And through all the ages
since the Roman Empire men have fed their healthy fancies and their
historical imagination upon the very twilight condition of such tales.
But to-day real agnosticism has declined along with real theology.
People cannot leave a creed alone; though it is the essence of a creed
to be clear. But neither can they leave a legend alone; though it is
the essence of a legend to be vague. That sane half scepticism which was
found in all rustics, in all ghost tales and fairy tales, seems to be
a lost secret. Modern people must make scientifically certain that St.
Joseph did or did not go to Glastonbury, despite the fact that it is
now quite impossible to find out; and that it does not, in a religious
sense, very much matter. But it is essential to feel that he may have
gone to Glastonbury: all songs, arts, and dedications branching and
blossoming like the thorn, are rooted in some such sacred doubt. Taken
thus, not heavily like a problem but lightly like an old tale, the thing
does lead one along the road of very strange realities, and the thorn is
found growing in the heart of a very secret maze of the soul. Something
is really present in the place; some closer contact with the thing which
covers Europe but is still a secret. Somehow the grey town and the green
bush touch across the world the strange small country of the garden and
the grave; there is verily some communion between the thorn tree and the
crown of thorns.

A man never knows what tiny thing will startle him to such ancestral and
impersonal tears. Piles of superb masonry will often pass like a common
panorama; and on this grey and silver morning the ruined towers of the
cathedral stood about me somewhat vaguely like grey clouds. But down in
a hollow where the local antiquaries are making a fruitful excavation, a
magnificent old ruffian with a pickaxe (whom I believe to have been St.
Joseph of Arimathea) showed me a fragment of the old vaulted roof which
he had found in the earth; and on the whitish grey stone there was just
a faint brush of gold. There seemed a pierci