Their agonizing dues they drown in distances which outdistance them; they cancel His contradictions in inaccessible uncertainty.

No matter; they believe in the idol made of a word.
And I?
I have awaked out of religion, since it was a dream.

It had to be that one morning my eyes would end by opening and seeing nothing more of it.
I do not see God, but I see the church and I see the priests.

Another ceremony is unfolding just now, in another direction--up at the castle, a Mass of St.Hubert.

Leaning on my elbows the spectacle absorbs me.
These ministers of the cult, blessing this pack of hounds, these guns and hunting knives, officiating in lace and pomp side by side with these wealthy people got up as warlike sportsmen, women and men alike, on the great steps of a castle and facing a crowd kept aloof by ropes,--this spectacle defines, more glaringly than any words whatever can, the distance which separates the churches of to-day from Christ's teaching, and points to all the gilded putridity which has accumulated on those pure defaced beginnings.