at
present palpable misery which was preaching to her, with the voice of
God Himself, that the wages of sin are death. Dust she was, and unto
dust she will return! Oh, glorious hope for her, for him, who felt as
if an eternity of bliss would be worthless, if it parted him from his
new-found treasure! Dust she was, and unto dust she must return!

Hapless Hypatia! If she must needs misapply, after the fashion of her
school, a text or two here and there from the Hebrew Scriptures, what
suicidal fantasy set her on quoting that one? For now, upon Philammon's
memory flashed up in letters of light, old words forgotten for
months--and ere he was aware, he found himself repeating aloud and
passionately, 'I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of
the body, and the life everlasting,'.... and then clear and fair
arose before him the vision of the God-man, as He lay at meat in the
Pharisee's house; and of her who washed His feet with tears, and wiped
them with the hairs of her head.... And from the depths of his agonised
heart arose the prayer, 'Blessed Magdalene, intercede for her?'

So high he could rise, but not beyond. For the notion of that God-man
was receding fast to more and more awful abysmal heights, in the
minds of a generation who were forgetting His love in His power, and
practically losing sight of His humanity in their eager doctrinal
assertion of His Divinity. And Philammon's heart re-echoed the spirit
of his age, when he felt that for an apostate like himself it were
presumptuous to entreat for any light or help from the fountain-head
itself. He who had denied his Lord, he who had voluntarily cut himself
off from the communion of the Catholic Church--how could he restore
himself? How could he appease the wrath of Him who died on the cross,
save by years of bitter supplication and self-punishment?....

'Fool! Vain and ambitious fool that I have been! For this I threw away
the faith of my childhood! For this I listened to words at which I
shuddered; crushed down my own doubts and disgusts; tried to persuade
myself that I could reconcile them with Christianity--that I could make
a lie fit into the truth! For this I puffed myself up in the vain hope
of becoming not as other men are--superior, forsooth, to my kind! It was
not enough for me to be a man made in the image of God: but I must needs
become a god myself, knowing good and evil.--And here is the end! I call
upon my fine philosophy to help me onc