'We are not the life of the world. God is. And when we fail, he can and will send out more and better labourers into his harvest-field. It is a divine accident by which we are thus associated.'
'But surely the church must be otherwise constituted.'
'My dear sir, you forget: I said we were a church, not the church.'
'Do you belong to the Church of England?'
'Yes, some of us. Why should we not? In as much as she has faithfully preserved the holy records and traditions, our obligations to her are infinite. And to leave her would be to quarrel, and start a thousand vermiculate questions, as Lord Bacon calls them, for which life is too serious in my eyes. I have no time for that.'
'Then you count the Church of England the Church?'
'Of England, yes; of the universe, no: that is constituted just like ours, with the living working Lord for the heart of it.'
'Will you take me for a member?'
'No.'
'Will you not, if—?'