mouth words of farewell; but his heart still beats to
what was and what is, rather than to what will be.

"When I took as my text to-night those three words of Our Lord to St.
Peter, _Feed my Lambs_, I took them as words that might be applied,
first to the Lord Bishop of this diocese, secondly to the priest who
will take my place in this Mission, and thirdly and perhaps most
poignantly of all to myself. I cannot bring myself to suppose that in
this moment of grief, in this moment of bitterness, almost of despair I
am able to speak fairly of the Bishop of Silchester's action in
compelling me to resign what has counted for all that is most precious
in my life on earth. And already, in saying that the Bishop has
compelled me to resign, I am not speaking with perfect accuracy,
inasmuch as if I had been willing to surrender what I considered one of
the essential articles of our belief, the Bishop would have been glad to
licence the new St. Agnes' and to give his countenance and his support
to me, the unworthy priest in charge of it.

"I want you therefore, dear people, to try to look at the matter from
the standpoint of the Bishop. I want you to try to understand that in
objecting to our little altar for the dead he is objecting not so much
to the altar itself as to the services said at that altar. If it had
merely been a question between us of a third altar, whether here or in
the new St. Agnes', I should have found it possible, however
unwillingly, to ask you--you, who out of your hard-earned savings built
that altar--to allow it to be removed. Yes, I should have been selfish
enough to ask you to make that great sacrifice on my account. But when
the Bishop insisted that I and the priests who have borne with me and
worked with me and preached with me and prayed with me all these years
should abstain from saying those Masses which we believe and which you
believe help our dear ones waiting for the Day of Judgment--why, then, I
felt that my surrender would have been a denial of our dear Lord, such a
denial as St. Peter himself uttered in the hall of the high-priest's
house. But the Bishop does not believe that our prayers here below have
any efficacy or can in any way help the blessed dead. He does not
believe in such prayers, and he believes that those who do believe in
such prayers are wrong, not merely according to the teaching of the
Prayer Book, but also according to the revelation of Almighty God. I do
not want you to