And now the eloquence of reverie was upon him. In a
little time he was also addressing the tea-party at Morrice Deans'. Upon
them too he ought to have thundered. And he knew now also all that he
should have said to the recalcitrant employer. Thunder also. Thunder is
surely the privilege of the higher clergy--under Jove.
But why hadn't he thundered?
He gesticulated in the darkness, thrust out a clutching hand.
There are situations that must be gripped--gripped firmly. And without
delay. In the middle ages there had been grip enough in a purple glove.
(2)
From these belated seizures of the day's lost opportunities the bishop
passed to such a pessimistic estimate of the church as had never entered
his mind before.
It was as if he had fallen suddenly out of a spiritual balloon into
a world of bleak realism. He found himself asking unprecedented and
devastating questions, questions that implied the most fundamental
shiftings of opinion. Why was the church such a failure? Why had it
no grip upon either masters or men amidst this vigorous life of modern
industrialism, and why had it no grip upon the questioning young? It was
a tolerated thing, he felt, just as sometimes he had felt that the
Crown was a tolerated thing.
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