Or, best of all, because he has believed, now he sees.
So he looked with a kind of interested indolence at other tracts of his nature.
First, there was his intellect, puzzled beyond description, demanding, Why, why, why?
Why was it allowed?
How was it conceivable that God did not intervene, and that the Father of men could permit His dear world to be so ranged against Him?
What did He mean to do?
Was this eternal silence never to be broken?
It was very well for those that had the Faith, but what of the countless millions who were settling down in contented blasphemy?
Were these not, too, His children and the sheep of His pasture?
What was the Catholic Church made for if not to convert the world, and why then had Almighty God allowed it, on the one side, to dwindle to a handful, and, on the other, the world to find its peace apart from Him?
He considered his emotions, but there was no comfort there, no stimulus.
Oh! yes; he could pray still, by mere cold acts of the will, and his theology told him that God accepted such.

He could say "_Adveniat regnum tuum.

...

Fiat voluntas tua_," five thousand times a day, if God wanted that; but there was no sting or touch, no sense of vibration through the cords that his will threw up to the Heavenly Throne.

What in the world then did God want him to do?
Was it just then to repeat formulas, to lie still, to open despatches, to listen through the telephone, and to suffer?
And then the rest of the world--the madness that had seized upon the nations; the amazing stories that had poured in that day of the men in Paris, who, raving like Bacchantes, had stripped themselves naked in the Place de Concorde, and stabbed themselves to the heart, crying out to thunders of applause that life was too enthralling to be endured; of the woman who sang herself mad last night in Spain, and fell laughing and foaming in the concert hall at Seville; of the crucifixion of the Catholics that morning in the Pyrenees, and the apostasy of three bishops in Germany....