profession for which insolence was a qualification. What rendered it
worse was that his good nature--and indeed every one of his gifts,
which were all of the popular order--was subservient to an
assumption not only self-satisfied but obtrusive!--And yet--and
yet--the objectionable character of his self-constituted judge being
clear as the moon to the mind of the curate, was there not something
in what he had said? This much remained undeniable at least, that
when the very existence of the church was denounced as a humbug in
the hearing of one who ate her bread, and was her pledged servant,
his very honesty had kept that man from speaking a word in her
behalf! Something must be wrong somewhere: was it in him or in the
church? In him assuredly, whether in her or not. For had he not been
unable to utter the simple assertion that he did believe the things
which, as the mouthpiece of the church, he had been speaking in the
name of the truth every Sunday--would again speak the day after
to-morrow? And now the point was--WHY could he not say he believed
them? He had never consciously questioned them; he did not question
them now; and yet, when a forward, overbearing young infidel of a
lawyer put it to him--plump--as if he were in the witness-box, or
rather indeed in the dock--did he believe a word of what the church
had set him to teach?--a strange something--was it honesty?--if so,
how dishonest had he not hitherto been?--was it diffidence?--if so,
how presumptuous his position in that church!--this nondescript
something seemed to raise a "viewless obstruction" in his throat,
and, having thus rendered him the first moment incapable of speaking
out like a man, had taught him the next--had it?--to quibble--"like
a priest" the lawyer-fellow would doubtless have said! He must go
home and study Paley--or perhaps Butler's Analogy--he owed the
church something, and ought to be able to strike a blow for her. Or
would not Leighton be better? Or a more modern writer--say Neander,