430
e_!"
A moment's silence, before all the voices, gathering into one harmony, sent the last versicle ringing through the arches of the choir, and the springing tracery of the feretory, and of the Lady Chapel beyond.
"_Lord to whom shall we go?--Thou--thou hast the words of eternal life_!"
"Only a few days or weeks," murmured Meynell, as they passed out into the evening light, "and we two--and those men singing there--shall be outcasts and wanderers, perhaps for a time, perhaps while we live. But to-day--and to-morrow--we are still children in the house of our fathers--sons, not slaves!--speaking the free speech of our own day in these walls, as the men who built them did in theirs. That joy, at least, no one shall take from us!"
At that "sad word Joy" Mary slipped her hand into his, and so they walked silently through the Close, toward the Palace, pursued by the rise and fall of the music from within.
The great service was over, with its bold adaptation of the religious language of the past, the language which is wrought into the being of Christendom, to the needs and the knowledge of the present. And now Meynell had risen, and was speaking to that thronged nave, crowded by men and women of many types and many distinctions, with that mingling of passion and simplicity which underlies success in all the poetic arts, and, first and foremost, the art of religious oratory. The sermon was to be known in after years by the name of "The Two Christianities"--and became one of the chief landmarks, or, rather, rallying cries of the Modernist cause. Only some fragments of it can be suggested here; one passage, above all, that Mary's brooding memory will keep close and warm to her life's end:
"...Why are we here, my friends? For what purpose is this great demonstration, this moving rite in, which we have joined this day? One-sixth at least of this congregation stands here under a sentence of ecclesiastical death. A few weeks perhaps, and this mighty church will know its white-hai