Of course all this he ought to have gone through long ago! But how
can a man go through anything till his hour be come? Saul of Tarsus
was sitting at the feet of Gamaliel when our Lord said to his
apostles--"Yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will
think that he doeth God service." Wingfold had all this time been
skirting the wall of the kingdom of heaven without even knowing that
there was a wall there, not to say seeing a gate in it. The fault
lay with those who had brought him up to the church as to the
profession of medicine, or the bar, or the drapery business--as if
it lay on one level of choice with other human callings. Nor were
the honoured of the church who had taught him free from blame, who
never warned him to put his shoes from off his feet for the holiness
of the ground. But how were they to warn him, if they had sowed and
reaped and gathered into barns on that ground, and had never
discovered therein treasure more holy than libraries, incomes, and
the visits of royalty? As to visions of truth that make a man sigh
with joy, and enlarge his heart with more than human tenderness--how
many of those men had ever found such treasure in the fields of the
church? How many of them knew save by hearsay whether there be any
Holy Ghost! How then were they to warn other men from the dangers of
following in their footsteps and becoming such as they? Where, in a
general ignorance and community of fault, shall we begin to blame?
Wingfold had no time to accuse anyone after the first gush of
bitterness. He had to awake from the dead and cry for light, and was
soon in the bitter agony of the cataleptic struggle between life and
death.

He thought afterwards, when the time had passed, that surely in this
period of darkness he had been visited and upheld by a power whose
presence and even influence escaped his consciousness. He knew not