Mercy, who ever worships the Christ, and devotes her life to the
service of His poor. I knew my dear mother would set herself against
this idea, but it nestled warm at my heart, for ever that idea of
escaping from the humdrum of ordinary life by some complete sacrifice
lured me onwards with its overmastering fascination.

Now one unlucky result of this view of religion is the idealisation of
the clergyman, the special messenger and chosen servant of the Lord.
Far more lofty than any title bestowed by earthly monarch is that
patent of nobility straight from the hand of the "King of kings," that
seems to give to the mortal something of the authority of the immortal,
and to crown the head of the priest with the diadem that belongs to
those who are "kings and priests unto God." Viewed in this way, the
position of the priest's wife seems second only to that of the nun, and
has, therefore, a wonderful attractiveness, an attractiveness in which
the particular clergyman affected plays a very subordinate part; it is
the "sacred office," the nearness to "holy things," the consecration
which seems to include the wife--it is these things that shed a glamour
over the clerical life which attracts most those who are most apt to
self-devotion, most swayed by imagination. And the saddest pity of all
this is that the glamour is most over those whose brains are quick,
whose hearts are pure, who are responsive to all forms of noble
emotions, all suggestions of personal self-sacrifice; if such in later
life rise to the higher emotions whose shadows have attracted them, and
to that higher self-sacrifice whose whispers reached them in their
early youth, then the false prophet's veil is raised, the poverty of
the conception seen, and the life is either wrecked, or through
storm-wind and surge of battling billows, with loss of mast and sail,
is steered by firm hand into the port of a nobler faith.