down, and tore my robe of honor from me. My fellow priests, my old
friends, criticised me and judged me harshly. They came no more to see
me, though I had been generous with them. In the college I built and
directed, one of my old friends sits in my place and forgets who put
him there. Another is the Bishop who disgraced me. Now, have I a
right to feel angry and rebel?"

"To me," said Mark, "it seems as if you have."

"I have not," and the priest spoke very earnestly. "I have no such
right. I never knew--for I did not ask--the reason of my disgrace.
But one thing I did know; I knew it was for my good. I knew that,
though it was a trial given me by men, there was in it, too, something
given by God. You judge as I should have judged ten years ago--by the
standards of the world. I judge now by other standards. It took
adversity to open my eyes. We are not here, my dear Mark, for the
little, but for the big things. I had the little and I thought they
were big. My fall from a place of honor has taught me that they were
really little, and that it is only now that I have the big. What is
religion for but to enlighten and to save--enlighten here that the
future may hold salvation? What were my purple, power and title?
Nothing, unless I could make them help to enlighten and to save myself
and others. I ought to have fought them, but I was not big enough to
see that they hindered where I could have made them help. Like a bolt
out of the sunlight came the stripping. My shame was the best offering
I have made during all the days of my life. In my misery I went to God
as naturally as the poor prodigal son went to his father when he was
reduced to eating husks from the trough of the swine. I asked nothing
as to the cause of my fall. I knew that, according to man's
standard--even according to the laws that she herself had made--that