Soul of a Bishop | Page 3

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THE 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 innumerable assembly, 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 radiant triangle 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?