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Soul of a Bishop-Part16_H. G. WELLS (1866-1946)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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that the widest separation he had hitherto been able to imagine

from this past had left him still a bishop, heretical perhaps,



innovating in the broadening of beliefs and the liberalizing of

practice, defensive even as Chasters was defensive, but still



with the palace and his dignities, differing in opinion rather

than in any tangible reality from his previous self. For a



bishop, disbelief in the Church is a far profounder scepticism

than mere disbelief in God. God is unseen, and in daily things



unfelt; but the Church is with the predestined bishop always. His

concept of the extremest possible departure from orthodoxy had



been something that Chasters had phrased as "a restatement of

Christ." It was a new idea, an idea that had come with an immense



effect of severance and novelty, that God could be other than the

God of the Creed, could present himself to the imagination as a



figure totallyunlike the white, gentle, and compromising

Redeemer of an Anglican's thought. That the bishop should treat



the whole teaching of the church and the church itself as wrong,

was an idea so new that it fell upon him now like a thunderbolt



out of a cloudless sky. But here, clear in his mind now, was a

feeling, amounting to conviction, that it was the purpose and



gesture of the true God that he should come right out of the

church and all his professions.



And in the first glow of his vision he felt this gesture

imperative. He must step right out.... Whither? how? And when?



To begin with it seemed to him that an immediate renunciation

was demanded. But it was a momentous step. He wanted to think.



And to go on thinking. Rather than to act precipitately. Although

the imperative seemed absolute, some delaying and arresting



instinct insisted that he must "think" If he went back to

Princhester, the everyday duties of his position would confront



him at once with an effect of a definitechallenge. He decided to

take one of the Reform club bedrooms for two or three days, and



wire to Princhester that he was "unavoidably delayed in town,"

without further explanations. Then perhaps this inhibitory force



would give way.

It did not, however, give way. His mind sat down for two days



in a blank amazement at the course before him, and at the end of

that time this reasonless and formless institution was as strong



as ever. During that time, except for some incidental exchanges

at his clubs, he talked to no one. At first he did not want to



talk to any one. He remained mentally and practically active,

with a still intensely vivid sense that God, the true God, stood



watching him and waiting for him to follow. And to follow meant

slipping right out of all the world he had ever known. To thrust



his foot right over the edge of a cliff would scarcely have

demanded more from the bishop's store of resolution. He stood on



the very verge. The chief secretion of his mind was a shadowy

experiment or so in explanation of why he did not follow.



(3)

Insensibly the extreme vividness of his sense of God's nearness



decreased. But he still retained a persuasion of the reality of

an immediate listenerwaiting, and of the need of satisfying him.



On the third day he found his mind still further changed. He no

longer felt that God was in Pall Mall or St. James's Park,



whither he resorted to walk and muse. He felt now that God was

somewhere about the horizon....



He felt too no longer that he thought straight into the mind of

God. He thought now of what he would presently say to God. He



turned over and rehearsed phrases. With that came a desire to try

them first on some other hearer. And from that to the attentive



head of Lady Sunderbund, prettily bent towards him, was no great

leap. She would understand, if any one could understand, the



great change that had happened in his mind.

He found her address in the telephone book. She could be quite



alone to him if he wouldn't mind "just me." It was, he said,

exactly what he desired.



But when he got to her great airy flat overlooking Hyde Park,

with its Omega Workshop furniture and its arresting decoration,



he was not so sure whether this encounter was so exactly the




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