"Yes, sitting here in this tawdry little church, I am beginning to make a few discoveries. I must positively lose the slightest consciousness of being superior to Queenie in any way whatsoever. Equally, I must get over the slightest consciousness of being superior to any of the worshipers in this church. I must get over the habit of being injured by the monstrousness of this war until I have been personally injured by it in the course of sharing its woes with the rest of mankind. I have got to find an individualism that while it abates nothing of its unwillingness to be injured by the state is simultaneously always careful in its turn never to injure or impede the state, which from the individual's point of view must be regarded not as a state, but as another individual. Presumably the chief function of an ordered religion is by acting through the individual to apply the sum of mankind's faith, hope, and love under the guidance of the Holy Ghost to the fulfilment of the divine purpose. In such a way the self-perfection of the individual will create the self-perfection of the state, and, oh, what a long time it will take! God is a great conservative; yet when He was incarnate He was a great radical. I wonder if I had ever had a real logical training, or indeed any formal education at all, whether I should be tossed about, as I am, from one paradox to another. The Church was, significantly enough, built upon Peter, not upon John nor upon Thomas; it was founded upon the most human of the apostles. If one might admit in God what in men would be called an afterthought, it might be permissible to look upon Paul as an afterthought to leaven some of the ponderousness of Peter's humanity. Anyway, the point is that the paradoxes began in the very beginning, and it's quite obvious that I'm not going to help myself or anybody else by exposing myself to them rather than to the mighty moral, intellectual, and spiritual fabric into which they have all been absorbed or by which they have all been rejected." During Sylvia's meditation the church had gradually filled with worshipers to receive the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Generally, that strangely wistful concession to the pathetic side of human nature had not made a deep appeal to Sylvia's instinct for worship; but this afternoon the bravery of self had fallen from her. For the first time she felt in all its force--not merely apprehending it as a vague discomfort--the utter desolation of the soul without God. In such a state of mind faith shrank to infatuate speculation, hope swelled to arrogance, and even love shivered in a chill and viewless futility, until the mystical sympathy of other souls, the humblest of whom was a secret only known to God, led her to identify herself with them and to cry with them: _"O salutaris Hostia,_ _Quæ cœli pandis ostium:_ _Bella premunt hostilia,_ _Da robur, fer, auxilium."_