"When I meant to take them, it was the same thing."

"Do I understand you that to intend to do a thing and then to change
the mind is the same as to do it?"

"Oh, no; not that; but I am not clear that it isn't my duty to take
them. I'm not sure that it is right for a priest to marry--if you will
pardon my saying so."

"And you come to me to convince you? It seems to me that Providence has
already done that through the agency of some young woman. If you really
know what it is to love a good woman there is no real doubt in your
mind as to the sacredness of marriage,--for the clergy or for anybody
else. Isn't your trouble perhaps an obstinate dislike to seem to
abandon a position once taken?"

The words might have sounded severe but for the tone in which they were
spoken.

"But that is not the whole of the matter," Maurice continued, feeling
as if he were being carried forward by an irresistible current. "If I
have been mistaken on this point about which I have felt so sure and so
strongly, what confidence can I have in my other beliefs?"

"Ah, it goes deep," Strathmore said with emphasis. "It is of no use to
put old wine into new bottles. The effect of trying to make you young
men accept mediaevalism, like clerical celibacy, is in the end to make
you doubt everything. Haven't you any respect for the authority of the
church?"