Guy Deverell Volume I Part 47

"And you prayed with him?"

"Yes, yes; he was very much agitated, though; and it was not easy to fix his thoughts, poor Sir Harry! It was very sad. He held my hand in his--my hand--all the time I sat by the bed, saying, 'Don't you think I'll get over it?--I feel that I shall--I feel quite safe while I hold your hand.' I never felt a hand tremble as his did."

"You prayed for him, and read with him?" said Lady Alice. "And you acted, beside, as his confessor, did not you, and heard some revelation he had to make?"

"You forget, my dear Lady Alice, that the office of confessor is unknown to the Church. It is not according to our theory to extract a specific declaration of particular sins."

"H'm! I remember they told me that you refused at school to read the Absolution to the boys of your house until they had made confession and pointed out an offender they were concealing."

The Bishop hemmed and slightly coloured. It might have amused an indifferent auditor to see that eminent and ancient divine taken to task, and made even to look a little foolish, by this old woman, and pushed into a corner, as a wild young curate might be by him on a question of Church doctrine.

"Why, as to that, the fact may be so; but it was under very special circ.u.mstances, Lady Alice. The Church refuses even the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to an intending communicant who is known to be living in wilful sin; and here was a wilful concealment of a grave offence, to which all had thus made themselves, and were continuing to make themselves, accessory. It is, I allow, a doubtful question, and I do not say I should be prepared to adopt that measure now. The great Martin Luther has spoken well and luminously on the fallacy of taking his convictions at any one period of his life as the measure of his doctrine at a later one. The grain of mustard-seed, the law of perpetual expansion and development, applies to faith as well as to motive and action, to the Christian as a spiritual individual as well as to the Church as an aggregate."

This apology for his faith did the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Queen's Copely urge in his citation before old Lady Alice Redcliffe, whom one would have thought he might have afforded to despise in a Christian way; but for wise purposes the instincts of self-defence and self-esteem, and a jealousy of even our smallest neighbour's opinion, is so deeply implanted, that we are ready to say a good word for ourselves to anyone who misconceives the perfect wisdom of our words, or the equally perfect purity of our motives.

END OF VOL. I.