"How is it that I don't get close to the good fellows on board the
ship?" said a very good and earnest padre to me. "Why don't these
fellow-officers of mine come to church? How is it that fellows I know to
be good and generous and kindly are yet to be found at the bar, in the
smoking-room, when my service is on? Why is it that the decent, nice
fellows aren't professing Christians, and some of the fellows who are my
most regular attendants haven't a tenth of the character and quality and
charm of these apparent pagans?"

What could I do but tell him the truth? I knew him well and felt that he
would understand. Most fellows, I said, don't come to church, because if
they've good and decent characters, they hate to be hypocrites. Now you
know, padre, in this improper world of ours, that many men are sinners,
by that I mean that convention describes as sinful some of the things
they do. What do you tell us when we go to early chapel in the morning?
"Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins and are in love
and charity with your neighbours and intend to lead a new life ... draw
near with faith and take this Holy Sacrament ..." Well, then, can you
conceive that such a state of mind exists in an otherwise decent man
that he finds the burden of his sin not intolerable, as he should do,
but that he hugs that special sin as a prisoner may hug his chains? That
his sin, or let us call it his breach of the conventions of Society, is
the one dear precious thing in his existence at the present moment. He
doesn't want to reform or to lead a new life. Later, no doubt, he'll
tire of this sin and then he may come to church again. But how could a
man of character go to God's House and be such an infernal hypocrite? He
cannot partake of the Body and Blood of Christ any more when he is in
that state of mind. So you see, padre, it is often the honest men who
won't be hypocrites, that won't go to your church.