much more important than it really was.  I’ve no doubt I did triumph a little, and I’m afraid I shall never be able not to feel rather glad when a fellow like that is put in his place.  I am not for a moment going to try to argue that you can carry Christian charity too far.  The more one meditates on the words, and actions of Our Lord, the more one grasps how impossible it is to carry charity too far.  All the same, one owes as much charity to Father Rowley as to the young man.  This sounds now I have written it down as if I were getting in a hit at you, and that is the worst of writing letters to justify oneself.  What I am trying to say is that if I were to have taken up arms for the young man and supposed him to be ill-used or misjudged I should be criticizing Father Rowley.  I think that perhaps you don’t quite realize what a saint he is in every way.  This is my fault, no doubt, because in my letters to you I have always emphasized anything that would bring into relief his personality.  I expect that I’ve been too much concerned to draw a picture of him as a man, in doing which I’ve perhaps been unsuccessful in giving you a picture of him as a priest.  It’s always difficult to talk or write about one’s intimate religious feelings, and you’ve been the only person to whom I ever have been able to talk about them.  However much I admire and revere Father Rowley I doubt if I could talk or write to him about myself as I do to you.

Until I came here I don’t think I ever quite realized all that the Blessed Sacrament means.  I had accepted the Sacrifice of the Mass as one accepts so much in our creed, without grasping its full implication.  If anybody were to have put me through a catechism about the dogma I should have answered with theological exactitude, without any appearance of misapprehending the meaning of it; but it was not until I came here that its practical reality—­I don’t know if I’m expressing myself properly or not, I’m pretty sure I’m not; I don’t mean practical application and I don’t mean any kind of addition to my faith; perhaps what I mean is that I’ve learnt to grasp the mystery of the Mass outside myself, outside that is to say my own devotion, my own awe, as a practical fact alive to these people here.  Sometimes when I go to Mass I feel as people who watched Our Lord with His disciples and followers must have felt.  I feel like one of those people who ran after Him and asked Him what they could do to be saved.  I feel when I look at what has been done here as if I must go to each of these poor people in turn and beg them to bring me to the feet of Christ, just as I suppose on the shores of the sea of Galilee people must have begged St. Peter or St. Andrew or St. James or St. John to introduce them, if one can use such a word for such an occasion.  This seems to me the great work that Father Rowley has effected in this parish.  I have only had one rather shy talk with him about religion, and in the course of it I said something in praise of what his personality had effected.

     “My personality has effected nothing,” he answered.  “Everything
     here is effected by the Blessed Sacrament.”