登陆注册
15388000000008

第8章 THE SECOND - THE WEAR AND TEAR OF EPISCOPACY(5)

Machinery has made them into different species.The employer lives away from his work-people, marries a wife foreign, out of a county family or suchlike, trains his children from their very birth in a different manner.Why, the growth curve is different for the two species.They haven't even a common speech between them.One looks east and the other looks west.How can you expect them to agree? Of course they won't agree.We've got to fight it out.They say we're their slaves for ever.Have you ever read Lady Bell's 'At the Works'? A well-intentioned woman, but she gives the whole thing away.We say, No! It's our sort and not your sort.We'll do without you.We'll get a little more education and then we'll do without you.We're pressing for all we can get, and when we've got that we'll take breath and press for more.We're the Morlocks.Coming up.It isn't our fault that we've differentiated.""But you haven't understood the drift of Christianity," said the bishop."It's just to assert that men are One community and not two.""There's not much of that in the Creeds," said a second labour leader who was a rationalist."There's not much of that in the services of the church."The vicar spoke before his bishop, and indeed he had plenty of time to speak before his bishop."Because you will not set yourselves to understand the symbolism of her ritual," he said.

"If the church chooses to speak in riddles," said the rationalist.

"Symbols," said Morrice Deans, "need not be riddles," and for a time the talk eddied about this minor issue and the chief labour spokesman and the bishop looked at one another.The vicar instanced and explained certain apparently insignificant observances, his antagonist was contemptuously polite to these explanations."That's all very pratty," he said....

The bishop wished that fine points of ceremonial might have been left out of the discussion.

Something much bigger than that was laying hold of his intelligence, the realization of a world extravagantly out of hand.The sky, the wind, the telegraph poles, had been jabbing in the harsh lesson of these men's voices, that the church, as people say, "wasn't in it." And that at the same time the church held the one remedy for all this ugliness and contention in its teaching of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of men.Only for some reason he hadn't the phrases and he hadn't the voice to assert this over their wrangling and their stiff resolution.He wanted to think the whole business out thoroughly, for the moment he had nothing to say, and there was the labour leader opposite waiting smilingly to hear what he had to say so soon as the bout between the vicar and the rationalist was over.

(6)

That morning in the long galleries of the bishop's imagination a fresh painting had been added.It was a big wall painting rather in the manner of Puvis de Chavannes.And the central figure had been the bishop of Princhester himself.He had been standing upon the steps of the great door of the cathedral that looks upon the marketplace where the tram-lines meet, and he had been dressed very magnificently and rather after the older use.

He had been wearing a tunicle and dalmatic under a chasuble, a pectoral cross, purple gloves, sandals and buskins, a mitre and his presentation ring.In his hand he had borne his pastoral staff.And the clustering pillars and arches of the great doorway were painted with a loving flat particularity that omitted nothing but the sooty tinge of the later discolourations.

On his right hand had stood a group of employers very richly dressed in the fashion of the fifteenth century, and on the left a rather more numerous group of less decorative artisans.With them their wives and children had been shown, all greatly impressed by the canonicals.Every one had been extremely respectful.

He had been reconciling the people and blessing them and calling them his "sheep" and his "little children."But all this was so different.

Neither party resembled sheep or little children in the least degree..

The labour leader became impatient with the ritualistic controversy; he set his tea-cup aside out of danger and leant across the corner of the table to the bishop and spoke in a sawing undertone."You see," he said, "the church does not talk our language.I doubt if it understands our language.I doubt if we understand clearly where we are ourselves.These things have to be fought out and hammered out.It's a big dusty dirty noisy job.It may be a bloody job before it's through.You can't suddenly call a halt in the middle of the scrap and have a sort of millennium just because you want it....

"Of course if the church had a plan," he said, "if it had a proposal to make, if it had anything more than a few pious palliatives to suggest, that might be different.But has it?"The bishop had a bankrupt feeling.On the spur of the moment he could say no more than: "It offers its mediation."(7)

Full as he was with the preoccupation of these things and so a little slow and inattentive in his movements, the bishop had his usual luck at Pringle Junction and just missed the 7.27 for Princhester.He might perhaps have got it by running through the subway and pushing past people, but bishops must not run through subways and push past people.His mind swore at the mischance, even if his lips refrained.

He was hungry and, tired; he would not get to the palace now until long after nine; dinner would be over and Lady Ella would naturally suppose he had dined early with the Rev.Morrice Deans.

Very probably there would be nothing ready for him at all.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 29岁

    29岁

    苏永松,天使和吸血鬼的混血儿。血脉苏醒前,是个29岁的单身纯情处男,于29岁那年遭遇桃花劫,先后遇到霸道总裁,少女杀手,纯情学妹,甚至是前任,上演了一场现实版的“围城”。
  • 傲娇女王爱上蜜宠boss

    傲娇女王爱上蜜宠boss

    他和她青梅竹马两小无猜,那年,她8岁他12,上一代的恩怨情仇,使他成为一个报仇工具,他杀了她的父亲,她因此恨上了他,十年后她接手了"飉",他自知她不会原谅他,便在她身后默默做她的守护神……
  • 吻你成瘾:倒追腹黑男神

    吻你成瘾:倒追腹黑男神

    什么?男神要结婚了?新娘还不是她!甩胳膊,撸袖子,扛上搓衣板,奶奶的,反了天了。火急火燎冲到婚礼现场,某男笑的荡漾:“宾客有了,鲜花有了,钻戒有了,只是还差一个新娘。”林安安风中凌乱,下一秒咆哮出声:“混蛋,你还没求婚!!!”【绝对宠文,一对一,放心跳坑哦】
  • 破碎三千十万道

    破碎三千十万道

    拳破诸天,掌封万界。本尊一出,威压亘古,镇压现世,掌控未来,破碎三千十万道。
  • 古游记之蛮荒大陆

    古游记之蛮荒大陆

    一个普通亘古山村,一个普通的农桑子弟,因家境贫困替人渡恶修行,不料福缘眷顾,一步步成长起来,爱过,恨过,失败过,成功过......书中惊现盘山巨兽,书中遇异族妖女,书中灭家族豪强,书中寻宝藏奇缘,泪有之,笑有之,酒亦有之,历历梦幻般复古游记,尽在蛮荒奇人奇事。作者本人湖北省吕某正值而立之年,为凡俗琐事所缠,其实难有闲暇,该作品《古游记》系列计划写两到三部,蛮荒大陆为起始篇,本人写作不为名利,只为自己的一个梦而已,希望大家喜欢!
  • 盛世绝宠之太子休逃

    盛世绝宠之太子休逃

    本文女强,男更强!一对一!天,想她屌屌一生为祖国为人民奋斗!不说活到上百岁,成个人瑞,起码也该活到七八十,寿终正寝吧!谁成想,因为一破镯子,她穿越傲风大陆,成了东临声名狼藉的纨绔太子落羽,从此开始了被人压榨的悲催痛苦生活!东临有一太子落羽,人人闻之,唉,皆忍不住叹气。纨绔、惹是生非、欺软怕硬......提起他,几乎就没一人说他好的!不想,东临老皇被人下毒,太子落羽主动为父出海寻药,众人看向落羽的眼神,总算有了一丝欣慰,不曾想,这太子出海后,药是带回来了,竟还带了一艘装满了美男的大船!龙夜夙:落羽,你休想染指本王!落羽:我没想染指你啊!你别老是欺负我就不错了!霸王龙!龙夜初:羽哥哥,我好喜欢跟你一起玩儿啊!落羽:呵呵,你还是不要喜欢跟我一起玩儿吧。我担心,一不小心,我的小命就没有了。况且你太纯洁了,我不忍心摧残。穆飘然:本国师掐指一算,本国师跟你是天定的姻缘,所以太子还是乖乖投入本国师的怀抱吧!落羽:滚粗!老子可不想被你算计死!老子还想多活几年看美男呢!蓝珏:小羽儿,你不是最喜欢美男吗?本公子可是天下第一美男,你还不快快投入本公子的怀抱?落羽:蓝珏,你别对我放电啊!我要流鼻血了!你太美了,美得简直是人神共愤!可本太子要是摘下你这朵鲜花,肯定是要被人群攻而死,就算不被群攻而死,也要流鼻血而亡!所以老子还是离你远一点吧!......美男还在持续增加中!亲们还在等什么呢!快快入坑吧!
  • 蛮天之风飘絮

    蛮天之风飘絮

    蛮夷之地风飘絮。古老封闭落后的区域,很少与外界交流,先进的仙侠文明没有得到很好的传播,长期的封闭形成了该区域独特于其他地方的动植物。一千二百丈挺拔雄伟的树木,百来丈长的动物,独特的地理环境,构成的雨林颠覆对传统仙界雨林的认知。
  • 佛说回向轮经

    佛说回向轮经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 三生荼蘼勿念君

    三生荼蘼勿念君

    蓦然苏醒,已然在江北沉睡了三百年,是谁想要置自己于死地?又为何会和她拥有相似的容颜?冥冥之中究竟是谁替代了谁的爱情。“我是不是在很久以前见过你?我叫勿念,你呢?”“霍奚君”,你不屑地开口道,“如果有一天我因为你的样貌而爱上了你,记得推开我”。“如果真有那么一天我一定会推开你。我本就是历经过生死的人,如若你待我这个工具不好我随时会把你的秘密说出去。我忘不了大敌当前你就那样温柔地抱着她,而我流淌出的鲜血顺着手中的剑滴滴落下开出一片妖艳的花。我用仅有的力气拽住你,你转过身一贯的清冷,霍奚君如果是我先遇见你的,你还会……“她身子还很虚弱,我带她先走,你留下断后”。我的声音已被淹没,我的爱情也随他而去。
  • 三生三世弥天劫

    三生三世弥天劫

    不过一场劫,伤了爱晚的心,男主一次一次的虐她,不是不爱,只是爱晚了。妖、人、鬼、魔、四上神极力挽救天劫,最后一世的他们,却在度蜜月。你扔掉的你我的红线,却不知那是你我的红线。第一世,我们在一起度过很久,我却在最后你为我牺牲的时候爱上你,我想起了过往的一切,两百年的交心,想起了我与魔君之子的过往,奈何未集全你的魄。第二世,我拼尽全力,为你夺得帝位,统一天下,你是怎样对我的?少了一魄的你,是如此的?我走了,在你生命最后,我再回来。没了我,你的暴政终激起民愤。在暖玉濡内,你终于完完全全的回到了我身边,原来,你一直在我身边,原来,我竟是魔君之女......