“What liars we are, sir! How we colour things to justify ourselves! Look at our sacraments--are they a lie, or are they a sacrilege? Look at our charities--are we Pharisees or are we hypocrites? And our clergy, sir--our fashionable clergy! Surely some tremendous upheaval will shake to its foundations the Church wherein such things are possible--a Church that is more worldly than the world! And then the woman-life of the Church, see how it is thrown away. That sweetest and tenderest and holiest power, how it goes to waste under the eye and with the sanction of the Church in the frivolities of fashion--in drawing-rooms, in gardens, in bazars, in theatres, in balls----” He stopped. His last word had arrested him. Had he been thinking only of himself and of Glory? His head fell and he covered his face with his hand. “You are right, my son,” said the Father quietly, “and yet you are wrong, too. The Church of God will not be shaken to its foundations because of the Pharisees who stand in its public places, or because of the publicans who haunt its purlieus. Though the axe be laid to the rotten tree, yet the little seed will save its kind alive.” Then with an earnest smile and in a gentle voice he spoke of their little brotherhood in Bishopsgate Street; how ten years ago they had founded it for detachment from earthly cares and earthly aims, and for hiddenness with God; how they had established it in the midst of the world's, busiest highway, in the heart of the world's greatest market, to show that they despised gold and silver and all that the blind and cheated world most prizes, just as St. Philip and St. Ignatius had established the severest of modern rules in a profane and self-indulgent century, to show that they could stamp out every suggestion of the flesh as a spark from the fires of hell. And then he lifted his cord and pointed to the knots at the end of it, and told what they were--symbols of the three bonds by which he was bound--the three vows he had taken: the vow of poverty, because Christ chose it for himself and his friends; the vow of obedience, because he had said, “He that heareth you heareth Me”; and the vow of chastity, because it was our duty to guard the gates of the senses, and to keep our eyes and ears and tongue from all inordinateness. “But the lawful love of home and kindred,” said John; “what of that?” “We convert it into what is spiritual,” said the Father. “All human love must be based on the love of God if it is to be firm and true and enduring, and the reason of so much failure of love in natural friendship is that the love of the creature is not built upon the love of the Creator.” “But the love--say of mother and son--of brother and sister?”