I confess I was somewhat troubled by the tone of Bishop Dives’ utterance. It seemed to me to show all his old grasp of philosophical subtleties, but less than his old confidence in the claims of the supernatural. Could it be, I asked myself, that my oracle had himself changed with the change of the years, and gave forth now a different note? I was so troubled by this thought that I wrote again, asking him quite frankly to tell me if he thought his views were the same as when I knew him at Oxford, or different; and, if different, whether they had now reached a standstill, or whether they were still developing, and if so in what direction? His answer was a candid avowal: DEAR LADY PORSTOCK— _You have, with your usual directness and acumen, touched upon a point over which I have often questioned myself. Looking back over the years, it seems clear to me that my religious opinions have modified with time, and that, like the Greek poet long ago, “I grow old learning many things.” But, let it be observed, in these successive modifications of my point of view I am only following the example of what you and I recognize as being the Holy Catholic Church, which has learnt much, and, I think we may say, learned to forget much, since those early days when it seemed to dominate the world in the positiveness and self-assuredness of its youth._ _Now, picture to yourself some acrobat who finds it necessary, in the exercise of his profession, to walk every day, before an audience of neck-craning yokels, from one point to another over a tight-rope. He finds it easier to accomplish this (owing to a simple but interesting law of physics) if he carries with him a heavy pole that assures his balance. By degrees he finds that his skill is becoming greater; habit has made his task light to him. What does he do? He has six inches chopped off either end of his pole, so that his performance becomes at once more hazardous and more remarkable. Six months later, he finds that he can afford to shorten it once more. And so on, my dear Lady Porstock, and so on, until the pole in his hand is but a short stump, hardly more significant than the staff with which Babylonian fancy pictured Jacob as having crossed over Jordan._