EDITORIAL
It is four hundred and seventy-seven years since the trouble
in the Monastery. There were assembled many holy men
from every part of the civilised world, learned doctors, princes
of the Church, bishops, abbots, deans, all the wisdom of the
world ; for the Question was important—how many teeth were
there in a horse’s mouth.
For many days the debate swung this way and that, as
Father was quoted against Father, Gospel against Epistle,
Psalm against Proverb; and the summer being hot, and the
shade of the monastery gardens pleasant, a young monk
wearied of the discussion, and rising presumptuously among
those reverend men, impudently proposed that they should
examine the mouth of a horse and settle the question.
Now, there was no precedent for so bold a method, and we
are not to be surprised that those holy men arose right wrath-
fully and fell upon the youth and beat him sore.
Having further immured him in a solitary cell, they
resumed debate; but ultimately “in the grievous dearth of
theological and historical opinion” declared the problem
insoluble, an everlasting mystery by the Will of God.
To-day, their successors adopt the same principles with
regard to that darkest of horses, the A... A... They have
fed A I