“To tell the truth, Mr. St. Clair, it is a question I have little at heart. It has always seemed to me more an affair between Church and Chapel than one that concerns the masses very largely. And, you see, if I’m but an indifferent Churchman I’m just as bad a Chapel man. Indeed, so far as I can see, a Chapel man is only an average Trinitarian, plus envy, indocility, and cant. In the abstract, of course, I certainly think the Establishment cannot be justified to-day whatever might have been said for it, at the reformation, say. As for your endowments, I think the nonconforming envy of them simply contemptible, and the claim that they ought to be applied to national education, free libraries, art galleries, etc., a mere pretence. If John Bull wants art galleries he can afford to pay for them without taking the coat off your back. No! I don’t feel like slapping you in the face, Archdeacon, just to pleasure the Rev. Josiah Boanerges, who would have no objection to be snugly endowed himself. Frankly, I don’t think the Church will fall from any blows that may be dealt from without. Its danger lies in the dry-rot that is silently but surely Consuming the inner rafters and supports.”
“Dry rot, my dear Beaumont!”
“Yes, dry-rot. If I speak at all you must let me speak frankly, and you know I do not want to wound your sensibilities. Burns, after all, was foolish to sigh for the gift to see ourselves as others see us. It might from ‘mony a faultie free us and sair mistake’; but it would so rudely and so constantly shake our serenity that life would not be worth the living. Let us change the subject, Archdeacon.”
“Well, I’ll tell you frankly enough the great danger of the Church. You know it is a common lament that your services, in the towns, I mean, attract the women, not the men?”
The Vicar bowed a silent assent.
“Now, how do you account for it, Mr. St. Clair?”
“I can only suggest spiritual indifference.”
“Nay, I cannot subscribe to that. Take my town. Let a good speaker be announced to deliver an address on political or social questions he can fill the Town Hall with men and women, mostly men, of every grade—clergy men, dissenting ministers, lawyers, doctors, manufacturers, merchants, shop-keepers; and working-men.”
“Yes, but that is to hear about worldly affairs, Beaumont, not heavenly. Your lecturers deal with to-day and here. I speak of to-morrow and there.”
“Ah! well, Archdeacon, I think you will find if a man is anxious about setting matters right to-day and here he will not be indifferent about to-morrow and there. But you must satisfy him there is a to-morrow and there.”