'And this is what I have come out to see--reeds shaken in the wind, and men clothed in soft raiment, fit only for kings' palaces!' For this he had left the dear old Laura, and the simple joys and friendships of childhood, and cast himself into a roaring whirlpool of labour and temptation! This was the harmonious strength and unity of that Church Catholic, in which, as he had been taught from boyhood, there was but one Lord, one Faith, one Spirit.

This was the indivisible body, 'without spot or wrinkle, which fitly joined together and compacted by that which every member supplied, according to the effectual and proportionate working of every part, increased the body, and enabled it to build itself up in Love!' He shuddered as the well-known words passed through his memory, and seemed to mock the base and chaotic reality around him.

He felt angry with the old man for having broken his dream; he longed to believe that his complaints were only exaggerations of cynic peevishness, of selfish disappointment; and yet, had not Arsenius warned him?
Had he not foretold, word for word, what the youth would find-what he had found?
Then was Saint Paul's great idea an empty and an impossible dream?
No! God's word could not fail; the Church could not err.

The fault could not be in her, but in her enemies; not, as the old man said, in her too great prosperity, but in her slavery.

And then the words which he had heard from Cyril at their first interview rose before him as the true explanation.