Time flies. But the distance is near. I would like to imagine one night in ancient Egypt. The faces on the coffins, as I look at them, lid after lid, are quite realisable, those broad cheeks and bright eyes.... I suppose one could find five thousand mummies who in their lifetime were contemporaries, and one night they are all thinking about much the same thing. Something is toward at the Court; their chairs or carriages or chariots come for them; they are decked out, they have their jewels in their hair, their fine garb, their vanities, spites, triumphs, vexations, loves, ambitions. They dwell in their present moment, eyes burn, hearts beat faster, lips frame vain words. The same moon is on high, the same odour in the air. They bend their gaze towards the throne, they flock towards the throne as if the touch of it were miraculous. Vanity of vanities! The Israelites had to go out to the Desert to find the ten commandments and the Mosaic laws. Vanity of vanities—and is it not _all_ vanity? Is not the life of the ascetics in the Desert vanity also? No, for they have denied the world. They have said _No_ to Egypt and gone into the wilderness to seek a promised land. In their shrunken pearly faces is written a different allegiance from that of Pharaoh. They deny that this world is our world, that our life is our true life, that death is really death. But we do not condemn the gay crowd that imagination has summoned from the linen wrappings of the tombs, nor the glimmering of khaki and burnous in the purlieus of Cairo in that moment we call 1915. Mankind is one and indivisible. * * * * * Outside the city stand the three triangles and the woman’s head, signs written in the sand which might cause all people to know that there was some mystery about Cairo. The dead are sleeping and you cannot wake them. There are crowns on their heads, and they sleep that fixed, unearthly, steady sleep, undisturbed, untouched, uncorrupted. Egypt that was is dreaming Egypt that is. Out in the Desert sits the Sphinx with an I-am-that-I-am expression on its face. V ST. SOPHIA ... new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven ... as a bride adorned for her husband. Kingsley remarks that though Cyril thought he was establishing the kingdom of God upon earth, he was in reality establishing a sort of devil’s kingdom. The kingdom of God was independent of Cyril. And yet, of course, a great deal of the material success of Christianity was due to Cyril—if Christianity can really have such a thing as material success. Cyril was a sort of Cæsar to whom must be rendered the things that are Cæsar’s. And in his day imperial Cæsar himself had become Christian, and kings were to arise who would claim as a divine right, not only the things that are Cæsar’s but also the things that are God’s.