n while the patient is scratching your eyes out. If I
can leave my own point of view out of sight for the present I can be of
use, but I must let the scratching out of my eyes go on."

Mark went to the church early that evening, as it was his turn to be in
the confessional. One or two people came to confession, and then the
church seemed to be empty. He knelt down to his prayers and soon became
absorbed. To-night he was oppressed in a new way by the sins, the
temptations, and the unutterable weakness of man; his failures; his
uselessness. Nothing else in Art had ever impressed him so much as the
figure of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. That beautiful
figure, with all the freshness of its primal grace, stretching out its
arms from a new-born world towards the infinite Creator, had expressed,
with extraordinary pathos, the weakness, the failure, almost the
non-existence of what is finite. "I Am Who Am" thundered Almighty Power,
and how little, how helpless, was man!

And then, as Mark, weary with the misery of human life, almost repined
at the littleness of it all, he felt rebuked. Could anything be little
that was so loved of God? If the primal truth, if Purity Itself and Love
Itself could make so amazing a courtship of the human soul, how dared
anyone despise what was so honoured of the King? No, under all the
self-seeking, the impure motives, the horrid cruelties of life, he must
never lose sight of the delicate loveliness, the pathetic aspiration,
the exquisite powers of love that are never completely extinguished. He
must see with God's eyes, if he were to do God's work. And in the
thought that it was, after all, God's work and not his own, Mark found
comfort. He had come into the church feeling the burden on his shoulders
very hard to bear, and now he made the discovery that it was not he who
was carrying it at all; he only appeared to have it laid upon him while
Another bore it for him.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE CONDEMNATION OF MARK

Two excellent and cheerful old persons were engaged in conversation on
the subject of Father Molyneux. The Vicar-General of the diocese, a
Monsignor of the higher, or pontifical rank, had called to see the
Rector of Mark's church, and had already rapidly discussed other matters
of varying importance when he said, leaning back in an old and faded
leather chair:

"What's all this about young Molyneux?"

Both men were fairly advanced in years and old for their age, fo