VIII

There came a day, a day with sense of life astir, for breezes ran along the hillsides, and, in the valley, touched the reeds to swaying motion; grass and reeds were murmurous as with the voice of a god. Great eagles swayed on outstretched wings about the gray mountain-tops; down rocky paths the streams sped merrily, and uncounted flowers opened petals of white or gold or crimson to the sun. The very soul of spring thrilled through the joyous air, and to the shepherd-folk it seemed the gods were near, walking in the golden sunshine, athwart the unclouded blue. Surely the nymphs were holding festival: through the wood came sweeter, quicker melodies from the dryads whose steps are music on the wind, and a sound of wild dancing echoed from the satyr-folk far and near. The very sheep and goats were leaping high in play; the old wether, forgetting, dreamed himself again a lamb. Pan, what was Pan doing in this air alive and quick with happenings?

As Geoffrey walked alone, seeking his sheep, a sudden yearning kiss, the kiss of which he had been dreaming, was pressed upon his lips, and all the air grew sweet with the presence of her he could not see. Stung with quick passion, he flung out his arms, entreating her, yet clasped but empty air; and his ears were full of caressing murmurs, softer far than words. Following a voice that called, he found himself kneeling beneath the beech that was her home, breathless with swift pursuit up the hill, for she had led him the maddest chase over stream and stone. To what was she luring him? He no longer cared. Follow he must, though she led beyond all hope, all prayer.

He cried aloud for her to come to him, his senses full of her leafy fra

grance, and, reaching out his arms, he gathered branch and leaves into close embrace, kissing them with passionate lips. So lost was he, so drawn toward things unseen, that he stood like one on whom a trance has fallen, and, rooted to the spot, it seemed as if he were winning to the life of the tree, his very fingers becoming one with the outstretched leaves, while nearer and nearer the human grew the indwelling soul that was she.

Because of his forgetfulness, his sheep scattered this way and that; two ewes, wandering on the hillside, joined an alien flock; and the lamb that had been sheltered in the dryad's bosom, stumbling, perhaps, like him, seeking her, fell into the stream that ran across the pasture, and was drowned. The shepherd, coming on this confusion, was seized with sudden anger, in the new prudence of a householder, careful of his goods, and, pursuing, took his friend's crook from his hands, telling him that he should guard the sheep no longer, since he had betrayed his trust.

The knight, who once would have struck down one that dared such insult, laid his hand upon the shoulder of Delphis, saying simply, "There is one who commands me; I may not choose'; and the shepherd's fearful eyes betrayed his understanding, for the old enchantment whereby he had been driven through inner desire toward what he dreaded, returned. Stumbling he went away, his head bent down upon his breast, and Geoffrey, watching with eyes growing serene as green leaf against the blue, saw him running as from pursuit.

So wistful was the voice that called across the murmuring silences that he knew the dryad longed to hold him, even as mortal woman would; for the hands that laid such sweet caresses on cheek and forehead were tender and real

as human hands, and the whispered words that met his ear were pleading with human love. Could he be wholly hers, she told him, forgetting all before, the hope, the long, hard road, the battles yet to be, she would become all human to him, taking mortal form whenever he willed, nestling in his arms, never to say farewell. Instead of the fevered space of human life, the hot heart-beats, death swift upon the track, the long sweet tree-life should be his, that all but immortality, spread leafwise on the air; and then, the centuries past, with her he should bow before the wind, to the peace of falling leaves and crumbling branch. Yes, she would come to him in utmost beauty, would he but promise to leave forever on Pan's tree sword and armor, and the cloak that bore the symbol of his far path.

Bending, he snatched from the ground this crusader's cloak, carried with him always as he watched his sheep, and passionately he began his vow, by Pan's sweet voice among the reeds, to give to his keeping, beyond recall, sword and armor. In the sudden passion of springtime he swore to do her will, renouncing all for her, the beginning and the end of the quest. From out the protecting beech she stepped, divine in the loveliness of her green-veiled form, swept by her long dark hair, the luminous eyes sweet with her struggle to win to mortal love.

Lifting his eyes, shading them with his hand before her as he stepped forward, he caught a glimpse beyond her of white sails riding gallantly over the blue water, widespread to the quick wind, white sails whereon the cross had been woven, and he knew the Crusaders' fleet. Across the greenclad slopes of pine and of olive sounded faintly the notes of the hymn, chanted by many voices; and, listening with

reverent head bent down, he heard in memory the sound of many feet, marching in unison along the far white road. Through encompassing sunshine, through frond and foliage, down to the core of his heart in this moment of fullest sweetness pierced the old call, and the radiance of his shepherd days faded swiftly as a many-tinted rainbow. In a quick flash of revelation he knew the depths within; spite of the pleading face before him, there was no going back for him whose feet had once been set upon the holy way. To him had been given for brief moments the joy of earth, yet naught could wrest from him his deeper heritage of pain, the divine right to suffer. High in the air he waved again, and yet again, the cloak that bore the flaming symbol of the cross, until one upon the foremost vessel saw, and gave back signal for signal.

From the branches of the tree came a sound of hurt sobbing, as, in sharp struggle, he turned away; yet, though he saw woman's anguish in that face, blended with the look of fear that green branches wear, swayed by wind against dark storm-cloud, he did not stop.

As he sped down the stony hill, his cloak fluttering behind him with the swiftness of his flight, there lingered with him still a sense of white arms stretched out longingly to enfold him, yet all his soul grew an-hungered for the rough places of that way leading to the tomb from whence our Lord, arising, had brought the joy of immortal life. Then he stopped, so suddenly that he almost fell; for there, upon the grass beneath the cliff, lay the shepherd, his crook still in his hand, dead where he had fallen in his mad flight, tall anemones nodding above his quiet face.

Upon his knees Geoffrey kissed the sun-browned cheek, grown strangely

white, and placed his head upon the bosom of his friend to listen. Ah, still and cold he lay under the sunshine to which he had never failed to answer! His grief gave way to the wilder grief of Ino, who, coming, flung herself upon the bosom of her lover, and, with loud cries that startled the high-flyingeagles, called on him to return, and begged his heart to beat. Wildly she upbraided those unseen ones who had wrought this woe; the howl of the brown dog, who grieved as hopelessly, blended with her cries, and with the wails of the tired mother and aged grandam, still spinning on her distaff. Helpless he listened, face to face with the old question of death among the flowers, full of an overmastering sense of the great need of human life. Comfort there was none for Ino, whose sobbing voice followed down the dim ways of death.

'Go not down,' she cried, 'to darkness where thou shalt not hear, nor see, nor feel my bosom on thine own. Go not into that silence, where thou shalt not eat, nor drink, nor know the sun's time. Thou shalt not go; my arms shall hold thee back.'

She lay across his breast, and the

dark hair, tangled among the grass and flowers, grew dull of hue in her pain. The satyr-folk, frightened, gave back her wail, and from the forest came a sound of scudding feet; nor nymph nor dryad came to help. Pan, where was Pan the Comforter? From murmuring stream, from nestling pine branches, from leaping lambs of the flock no answer came; there was no voice to tell the way he went in this hour of supreme need.

Stung by the grief that knew no solace, the sobs that naught could still, the eyes that saw only lifeless clay, the young knight knelt in prayer for her comfort and her lover's peace, while, across the green valley, he saw the sails of the fleet draw near, draw near. Then toward Pan's tree he sped, over the soft grass, past his flock, grazing still and not looking up, past his dog, who whimpered with sudden sense of farewell, past satyr-folk who gave out bleating, questioning cries; past the altar to Pan of the Safe Journey, sped the young crusader, back to the joy and pain of the quest, his to win again, even with the naked sword, the hope of the world.

THERE are two sharply defined views as to the significance of what is called 'modern religious thought.' The first - that of the thinkers in question is that it marks the beginning of an epoch, that it has immense promises for the future, that it is about to transform, little by little, all religious opinion, and especially such opinions as are called 'orthodox.' The second view is that it marks the end of an epoch, that it is of the nature of a melancholy process at last discredited, that it is about to be re-absorbed in the organism from which it takes its origin, or lost in the sands of time. Let us examine these two points of view.

The modern thinkers take their rise, practically, from the religious upheaval of the sixteenth century. At that period of Christendom the establishment of the principle of Nationalism in religion struck the first blow against the idea of a final revelation guaranteed by an infallible authority; for the substitution, as a court of appeal, of a written Book for a living voice could only be a transitional step towards the acceptance by each individual, in whose hands the Book is placed, of himself as interpreter of it. Congregationalism followed Nationalism, and Individualism (or pure Protestantism) Congregationalism; and since both the Nation and the Congregation disclaimed absolute authority, little by little there came

into existence the view that 'true religion' was that system of belief which each individual thought out for himself; and, since these individuals were not found to agree together, 'Truth' finally became more and more subjective; until there was established the most characteristically modern form of thought, namely that Truth was not absolute at all, and that what was true and imperative for one was not true nor imperative for another. Further, the original acceptance of the Bible as containing Divine Revelation became itself modified by internal criticism and the discoveries of external science, until at the present day we find 'modern religion' practically to consist in an attitude of mind, more or less Christian in sentiment, though often indignantly claiming the name; in an ethical system and a belief in progress toward an undefined and only gradually realizable goal, rather than in an acceptance of a series of historical events and of dogmas built upon them.

On the other side stands that body of opinion represented by the Catholic Church, whose tenets are as they have always been involving, and indeed founded upon, the idea that theology is not, as are the other sciences, merely progressive and inductive, but is rather the working out, under Divine guarantees, of a body of truth revealed by God two thousand years ago.

We find then at the present day two mutually exclusive views of the future of religion. To the 'modern thinker' it appears certain that the process begun almost instinctively in the sixteenth century, justified as it seems to be by the advance of science and criticism, will continue indefinitely, to the final destruction of the other view. To the Catholic it appears equally certain that the crumbling of all systematic authority down to that of the individual, and the impossibility of discovering any final court in Protestantism to which the individual will bow, is the death sentence of every attempt to find religious Truth outside that infallible authority to whose charge, he believes, truth has been committed. The view of the writer of this paper is emphatically the second of these two.

That the 'modern system' has accomplished great things and made important contributions to thought, is of course obvious. Much of the useful work that has been done recently, especially in the direction of popularizing science, as well as of correlating discoveries and compiling statistics, particularly in the sphere of comparative religion, has been done by these independent thinkers. But they have injured their own usefulness by assuming an authority which, by their own profession, they repudiate; and by displaying an almost amazing ignorance of the significance of certain enormous facts, and even of the existence of the facts themselves. Let us enumerate a few.

It is usually assumed by the members of this school that the Catholic Church is the discredited church of the uneducated. It appears to be their opinion that Catholics consist of a few Irish in America and a small percentage of debased Latins in Europe. They seem to be entirely unaware that a movement is going forward amongst

some of the shrewdest and most independent minds in all civilized countries, which, if precedent means anything, implies as absolutely sound the prediction of Mr. H. G. Wells that we are on the verge of one of the greatest Catholic revivals the world has ever

seen.

When men in France like Brunetière, Coppée, Huysmans, Retté, and Paul Bourget, come forward from agnosticism or infidelity; when Pasteur, perhaps the most widely known scientist of his day, declares that his researches have left him with the faith of the Breton peasant, and that further researches, he doubts not, would leave him with the faith of the Breton peasant's wife; when, in Great Britain, an Irish Protestant professor of biology, a professor of Greek at Glasgow, and perhaps the greatest judge on the bench, in the very height of maturity and of their reputation, deliberately make their submission to Rome; when, within the last few months, the Lutheran professor of history at Halle follows their example; when two of those who are called 'the three cleverest men in London,' not only defend Catholicism, but defend it with the ardor of preaching friars; when, in spite of three centuries of Protestantism, enforced until recently by the law of the land, the Catholic party in the English Parliament once more has the balance of power, as also it holds it in Germany; when, as is notorious, the 'man-in-thestreet' publicly declares that if he had any religion at all, it would be the Catholic religion; when a papal legate elicits in the streets of Protestant London a devotion and an hostility that are alike the envy of all modern 'leaders of religious thought,' and sails up the Rhine into Cologne to the thunder of guns and the pealing of bells; when this kind of thing is happening everywhere; when the only successful mis