"And what is the end to be? Not only--oh! Not only--_to destroy_!" said Mary. The soft intensity of the voice, the beauty of the look, touched him strangely.
He smiled, and there was a silence for a minute, as they wandered downward through a purple stretch of heather to a little stream, sun-smitten, that lay across their path. Once or twice she looked at him timidly, afraid lest she might have wounded him.
"Shall I answer you in the words of a beloved poet?
"'What though there still need effort, strife? Though much be still unwon? Yet warm it mounts, the hour of life! Death's frozen hour is done!
"'The world's great order dawns in sheen After long darkness rude, Divinelier imaged, clearer seen, With happier zeal pursued.
"'What still of strength is left, employ, _This_ end to help attain-- _One common wave of thought and joy Lifting mankind again_!'
"There"--his voice was low and rapid--"_there_ is the goal! a new _happiness_: to be reached through a new comradeship--a freer and yet intenser fellowship. We want to say to our fellowmen: 'Cease from groping among ruins!--from making life and faith depend upon whether Christ was born at Bethlehem or at Nazareth, whether He rose or did not rise, whether Luke or some one else wrote the Third Gospel, whether the Fourth Gospel is history or poetry. The life-giving force is _here_, and _now_! It is burning in your life and mine--as it burnt in the life of Christ. Give all you have to the flame of it--let it consume the chaff and purify the gold. Take the cup of cold water to the thirsty, heal the sick, tend the dying, and feel it thrill within you--the ineffable, the immortal life! Let the false miracle go!--the true has grown out of it, up from it, as the flower from the sheath.' Ah! but then"--he drew himself up unconsciously; his tone hardened--"we turn to the sons of tradition, and we say: 'We too must have our rights in what the past has built up, the past has bequeathed--as well as you! Not for you alone, the institutions, the buildings, the arts, the traditions, that the Christ-life has so far fashioned for itself. They who made them are Our fathers no less than yours--give us our share in them!--we claim it! Give us our share in the cathedrals and churches of our country--our share in the beauty and majesty of our ancestral Christianity.' The men who led the rebellion against Rome in the sixteenth century claimed the _plant_ of English Catholicism. 'We are our fathers' sons, and these things are _ours!_' they said, as they looked at Salisbury and Winchester. We say the same--with a difference. 'Give us the rights and the citizenship that belong to us! But do not imagine that we want to attack yours. In God's name, follow your own forms of faith--but allow us ours also--within the common shelter of the common Church. We are children of the same God--followers of the same Master. Who made you judges and dividers over us? You shall not drive us into the desert any more. A new movement of revolt has come--an hour of upheaval--and the men, with it!'"