The most he would do was to promise that the gates of hell should not prevail against it. It is about all that, looking back on the history of the Church, one can feel that they have not done.

"Nought usually comes at the beginning," Ralph said. "Not necessarily," said Sibyl. "It might come anywhere. Nought isn't a number at all. It's the opposite of number." Nancy looked up from the cards. "Got you, aunt," she said. "What about ten? Nought's a number there - it's part of ten." "Well, if you say that any mathematical arrangement of one and nought really makes ten - " Sibyl smiled. "Can it possibly be more than a way of representing ten?"

To forgive and to be forgiven are the two points of holy magnificence and holy modesty; round these two centres the whole doctrine of largesse revolves.

It is as pleasant as it is unusual to see thoroughly good people getting their deserts.

It may be a movement towards becoming like little children to admit that we are generally nothing else.

How can one bargain for anything that is worth while? And what else is worth bargaining for?

The beginning of Christendom, is, strictly, at a point out of time. A metphysical trigonometry finds it among the spiritual Secrets, at the meeting of two heavenward lines, one drawn from Bethany along the Ascent of the Messias, the other from Jerusalem against the Descent of the Paraclete. That measurement, the measurement of eternity in operation, of the bright cloud and the rushing wind, is, in effect, theology.