And the Immaculate and the other sneaks replied, “We will,” and they swore.
But the Inside Guard said to the Immaculate, “There yet seems to be something about thee that betokens that thou hast been and lived somewhere where the Spirit of Christ is, and may have somewhat of a taint of that Spirit upon thee, in which case thou canst in no wise be admitted.”
And the Very Reverend Doctor Immaculate Barkworst was grieved to be kept so long at the door; and he said, “Before Heaven, I do solemnly swear that there is no taint of that objectionable Spirit on me. The Odor thou smellest on me is the real old honest one that belongs to an Old Frequenter, which I am. Search me, try me, examine me, smell of me, and thou shalt find not the slightest trace of that Spirit about me. And as with me, so it is with these, my pals.”
And the Inside Guard called assistants, and they examined him with strong magnifying glasses, and turned him over and inside out, and probed him and smelt of him, and tested him chemically, and finding no trace of the Spirit of Christ in him, and that he had told the Truth, they said, “Pass him in; he is a genuine dirty dog like unto the dirtiest of us, and no spy.”
So the Reverend Immaculate and the other dirty bow-wows had a high old time; and they saw all the sports and the dances; and they made themselves at home and hugely enjoyed the dirty revel; and never once did any of them betray the slightest sign that they had so much as heard of Jesus.
But afterwards, this dirty dog of a prophet got up in the Church of the Fleas, and boasted of the things he and his fellow dirty ones had done; of the dark and devious ways by which they had gone to the Haunt of the filthy dogs and got Evidence; of the lies they had told and acted to obtain an inside sight thereof; of the filth they had smeared themselves over with to identify themselves with the filthy ones; of the risk they had run of being caught by the police dogs and “run in,” as part of the ungodly crew, and of the terrible plight they would have been in—had the police dogs caught them—to explain to those undiscerning and thick-headed animals that they were rolling in the filth for a high and lofty moral purpose, and to the glory of God, and were breaking the law in order to get it enforced; how they had plighted their troth with them in order that they might gain their faith in order to violate it, and betray them to the police dogs, to be worried and mutilated and made to “move on.”
And all the Church of the Fleas applauded, and said he was a right lovely dog, who had given the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth a tremendous shove forward, and brought Society within measureable distance of the millennium, and had shown beyond doubt, that the only truly efficacious way of making the Blessed Gospel Chariot go, was to get the police to push behind; and asked a special blessing upon him, and made him up a special basketful of meat, and gave him a holiday to go across the pond and rest, and lick himself clean.
And at their next session, the “Filthy Dog Driving Out Society,” resoluted the following resolutions:
“Whereas: Our beloved and right morally lovely servant, the Very Reverend Doctor Immaculate Barkworst, has, at immense risk of, and peril to his own virtue, and with a great sacrifice of Truth and Honesty, explored the Haunt of Vice in our midst, and turned thereupon a great light, and has caused the vile inhabitants thereof to be chased out by Law, to “move on” and die and rot—as they do most richly deserve—and has given us a clean city once more;
