yet must go and read prayers and preach in the old attesting church,
as if he too were of those who knew something of the secrets of the
Almighty, and could bring out from his treasury, if not things new
and surprising, then things old and precious! Ought he not to send
round the bell-man to cry aloud that there would be no service? But
what right had he to lay his troubles, the burden of his dishonesty,
upon the shoulders of them who faithfully believed, and who looked
to him to break to them their daily bread? And would not any attempt
at a statement of the reasons he had for such an outrageous breach
of all decorum be taken for a denial of those things concerning
which he only desired most earnestly to know that they were true.
For he had received from somewhere, he knew not how or whence, a
genuine prejudice in favour of Christianity, while of those
refractions and distorted reflexes of it which go by its name and
rightly disgust many, he had had few of the tenets thrust upon his
acceptance.

Thus into the dark pool of his dull submissive life, the bold words
of the unbeliever had fallen--a dead stone perhaps, but causing a
thousand motions in the living water. Question crowded upon
question, and doubt upon doubt, until he could bear it no longer,
and starting from the floor on which at last he had sunk prostrate,
he rushed in all but involuntary haste from the house, and scarcely
knew where he was until, in a sort, he came to himself some little
distance from the town, wandering hurriedly in field-paths.