Christianity, as Mr. W.L. Courtney has so admirably
pointed out, is a great Mystery Religion; it is _the_ Mystery
Religion. Its priests are called to an awful and tremendous hierurgy;
its pontiffs are to be the pathfinders, the bridge-makers between the
world of sense and the world of spirit. And, in fact, they pass their
time in preaching, not the eternal mysteries, but a twopenny morality,
in changing the Wine of Angels and the Bread of Heaven into gingerbeer
and mixed biscuits: a sorry transubstantiation, a sad alchemy, as it
seems to me.
The Bowmen
It was during the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand, and the authority of
the Censorship is sufficient excuse for not being more explicit. But
it was on the most awful day of that awful time, on the day when ruin
and disaster came so near that their shadow fell over London far away;
and, without any certain news, the hearts of men failed within them
and grew faint; as if the agony of the army in the battlefield had
entered into their souls.
On this dreadful day, then, when three hundred thousand men in arms
with all their artillery swelled like a flood against the little
English company, there was one point above all other points in our
battle line that was for a time in awful danger, not merely of defeat,
but of utter annihilation.
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