a very artistic thing, a perception of effects which are hidden
from many hearts and minds. When a man speaks of definite religious
experience, I feel that I am in the presence of a perception of
something real--as real as music and painting. But I doubt if it is
a sense given to all, or indeed to many; and I don't know what it
really is. And then, too, one comes across people who hold it in an
ugly, or a dreary, or a combative, or a formal way; and then
sometimes it seems to me almost an evil thing."

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "I understand that. May I give you an
instance, and you will see if I perceive your thought. The good
Vicar here, my cousin Frank, Jack's father--you will meet him to-
night--is a man who holds a rigid belief, or thinks he holds it. He
preaches what he calls the sinew and bone of doctrine, and he is
very stern in the pulpit. He likes lecturing people in rows! But in
reality he is one of the kindest and vaguest of men. He preached a
stiff sermon about conversion the other day--I am pretty sure he
did not understand it himself--and he disquieted one of my good
maids so much that she went to him and asked what she could do to
get assurance. He seems to have hummed and hawed, and then to have
said that she need not trouble her head about it--that she was a
good girl, and had better be content with doing her duty. He is the
friendliest of men, and that is his real religion; he hasn't an
idea how to apply his system, which he learned at a theological
college, but he feels it his duty to preach it."

"Yes," said Howard, "that is just what I mean; but there must be
some explanation for this curious outburst of forms and doctrines,
so contradictory in the different sects. Something surely causes
both the form of religion and the force of it?"