whether he would or no. They were mainly legal and technical, intimating
that an application had been made to the Bishop of Markborough to issue a
Commission of Inquiry into certain charges made by parishioners of Upcote
Minor against the Rector of the parish. The writer of the letter was one
of the applicants, and gave notice of his intention to prosecute the
charges named, with the utmost vigour through all the stages prescribed
by ecclesiastical law.

But it was, rather, some earlier letters from the same hand--letters more
familiar, intimate, and discursive--that ultimately held the Rector's
thoughts as he kept his watch. For in those letters were contained almost
all the objections that a sensitive mind and heart had had to grapple
with before determining on the course to which the Rector of Upcote was
now committed. They were the voice of the "adversary," the "accuser."
Crude or conventional, as the form of the argument might be, it yet
represented the "powers and principalities" to be reckoned with. If the
Rector's conscience could not sustain him against it, he was henceforth a
dishonest and unhappy man; and when his lawyers had failed to protect him
against its practical result--as they must no doubt fail--he would be a
dispossessed priest:

"What discipline in life or what comfort in death can such a faith as
yours bring to any human soul? Do, I beg of you, ask yourself this
question. If the great miracles of the Creed are not true, what have you
to give the wretched and the sinful? Ought you not in common human
charity to make way for one who can offer the consolations, utter the
warnings, or hold out the heavenly hopes from which you are debarred?"

* * * * *