Soul of a Bishop

by H. G. Wells
CONTENTS

CHAPTER THE FIRST - THE DREAM
CHAPTER THE SECOND - THE WEAR AND TEAR OF EPISCOPACY

CHAPTER THE THIRD - INSOMNIA
CHAPTER THE FOURTH - THE SYMPATHY OF LADY SUNDERBUND

CHAPTER THE FIFTH - THE FIRST VISION
CHAPTER THE SIXTH - EXEGETICAL

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH - THE SECOND VISION
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH - THE NEW WORLD

CHAPTER THE NINTH - THE THIRD VISION
"Man's true Environment is God"

J. H. OLDHAM in "The Christian Gospel"
(Tract of the N. M. R. and H.)

THE SOUL OF A BISHOP
CHAPTER THE FIRST - THE DREAM

(1)
IT was a scene of bitter disputation. A hawk-nosed young man

with a pointing finger was prominent. His face worked violently,
his lips moved very rapidly, but what he said was inaudible.

Behind him the little rufous man with the big eyes twitched at
his robe and offered suggestions.

And behind these two clustered a great multitude of heated,
excited, swarthy faces....

The emperor sat on his golden throne in the midst of the
gathering, commanding silence by gestures, speaking inaudibly to

them in a tongue the majority did not use, and then prevailing.
They ceased their interruptions, and the old man, Arius, took up

the debate. For a time all those impassioned faces were intent
upon him; they listened as though they sought occasion, and

suddenly as if by a preconcerted arrangement they were all
thrusting their fingers into their ears and knitting their brows

in assumed horror; some were crying aloud and making as if to
fly. Some indeed tucked up their garments and fled. They spread

out into a pattern. They were like the little monks who run from
St. Jerome's lion in the picture by Carpaccio. Then one zealot

rushed forward and smote the old man heavily upon the mouth....
The hall seemed to grow vaster and vaster, the disputing,

infuriated figures multiplied to an innumerableassembly, they
drove about like snowflakes in a gale, they whirled in

argumentative couples, they spun in eddies of contradiction, they
made extraordinary patterns, and then amidst the cloudy darkness

of the unfathomable dome above them there appeared and increased
a radianttriangle in which shone an eye. The eye and the

triangle filled the heavens, sent out flickering rays, glowed to
a blinding incandescence, seemed to be speaking words of thunder

that were nevertheless inaudible. It was as if that thunder
filled the heavens, it was as if it were nothing but the beating

artery in the sleeper's ear. The attention strained to hear and
comprehend, and on the very verge of comprehension snapped like a

fiddle-string.
"Nicoea!"

The word remained like a little ash after a flare.
The sleeper had awakened and lay very still, oppressed by a

sense of intellectual effort that had survived the dream in which
it had arisen. Was it so that things had happened? The slumber-

shadowed mind, moving obscurely, could not determine whether it
was so or not. Had they indeed behaved in this manner when the

great mystery was established? Who said they stopped their ears
with their fingers and fled, shouting with horror? Shouting? Was

it Eusebius or Athanasius? Or Sozomen.... Some letter or apology
by Athanasius?... And surely it was impossible that the Trinity

could have appeared visibly as a triangle and an eye. Above such
an assembly.

That was mere dreaming, of course. Was it dreaming after
Raphael? After Raphael? The drowsy mind wandered into a side

issue. Was the picture that had suggested this dream the one in
the Vatican where all the Fathers of the Church are shown

disputing together? But there surely God and the Son themselves
were painted with a symbol--some symbol--also? But was that

disputation about the Trinity at all? Wasn't it rather about a
chalice and a dove? Of course it was a chalice and a dove! Then

where did one see the triangle and the eye? And men disputing?
Some such picture there was....

What a lot of disputing there had been! What endless disputing!
Which had gone on. Until last night. When this very disagreeable

young man with the hawk nose and the pointing finger had tackled
one when one was sorely fagged, and disputed; disputed. Rebuked

and disputed. "Answer me this," he had said.... And still one's
poor brains disputed and would not rest.... About the Trinity....

The brain upon the pillow was now wearily awake. It was at once
hopelessly awake and active and hopelessly unprogressive. It was

like some floating stick that had got caught in an eddy in a
river, going round and round and round. And round. Eternally--

eternally--eternally begotten.
"But what possible meaning do you attach then to such a phrase

as eternally begotten?"
The brain upon the pillow stared hopelessly at this question,

without an answer, without an escape. The three repetitions spun
round and round, became a swiftly revolving triangle, like some

electric sign that had got beyond control, in the midst of which
stared an unwinking and resentful eye.

(2)
Every one knows that expedient of the sleepless, the counting

of sheep.
You lie quite still, you breathe regularly, you imagine sheep

jumping over a gate, one after another, you count them quietly
and slowly until you count yourself off through a fading string

of phantom numbers to number Nod....
But sheep, alas! suggest an episcopal crook.

And presently a black sheep had got into the succession and was
struggling violently with the crook about its leg, a hawk-nosed

black sheep full of reproof, with disordered hair and a pointing
finger. A young man with a most disagreeable voice.

At which the other sheep took heart and, deserting the numbered
succession, came and sat about the fire in a big drawing-room and

argued also. In particular there was Lady Sunderbund, a pretty
fragile tall woman in the corner, richly jewelled, who sat with

her pretty eyes watching and her lips compressed. What had she
thought of it? She had said very little.

It is an unusual thing for a mixed gathering of this sort to
argue about the Trinity. Simply because a tired bishop had fallen

into their party. It was not fair to him to pretend that the
atmosphere was a liberal and inquiring one, when the young man

who had sat still and dormant by the table was in reality a keen
and bitter Irish Roman Catholic. Then the question, a

question-begging question, was put quite suddenly, without
preparation or prelude, by surprise. "Why, Bishop, was the

Spermaticos Logos identified with the Second and not the Third
Person of the Trinity?"

It was indiscreet, it was silly, to turn upon the speaker and
affect an air of disengagement and modernity and to say: "Ah,

that indeed is the unfortunateaspect of the whole affair."
Whereupon the fierce young man had exploded with:

"To that, is it, that you Anglicans have come?"
The whole gathering had given itself up to the disputation,

Lady Sunderbund, an actress, a dancer--though she, it is true,
did not say very much--a novelist, a mechanicalexpert of some

sort, a railway peer, geniuses, hairy and Celtic, people of no
clearly definable position, but all quite unequal to the task of

maintaining that air of reverent vagueness, that tenderness of
touch, which is by all Anglican standards imperative in so deep,

so mysterious, and, nowadays, in mixed society at least, so
infrequent a discussion.