Also they decided that it would not be without interest to know what
belief is held by the man of common education and intelligence--the man
who behaves correctly but will not go to church.

Here Father Riley sweetly reminded them--"No questions are asked in the
Mother Church, gentlemen, that may not be answered with authority. In
your churches, without an authority superior to mere reason, destructive
questions will be asked more and more frequently."

Gravely they agreed that the church was losing its hold on the people.
That but for its social and charitable activities, its state would be
alarming.

"Your churches!" Father Riley corrected with suave persistence. "No
church can endure without an infallible head."

Again and again during the meal Bernal had been tempted to speak. But
each time he had been restrained by a sense of his aloofness. These men,
too, were wheels within the machine, each revolving as he must. They
would simply pity him, or be amused.

More and more acutely was he coming to feel the futility, the crass,
absurd presumption of what he had come back to undertake. From the lucid
quiet of his mountain haunts he had descended into a vale where
antiquated cymbals clashed in wild discordance above the confusing
clatter of an intricate machinery--machinery too complicated to be
readjusted by a passing dreamer. In his years of solitude he had grown
to believe that the teachers of the world were no longer dominated by
that ancient superstition of a superhumanly malignant God. He had been
prepared to find that the world-ideal had grown more lofty in his