"What, then, do you suppose the proper relation between a London clergyman and his parishioners?"
"One, I am afraid, which does not at present exist,—one which it is his first business perhaps to bring about. I confess I regard with a repulsion amounting to horror the idea of walking into a poor man's house, except either I have business with him, or desire his personal acquaintance."
"But if our office"—
"Makes it my business to serve—not to assume authority over them especially to the degree of forcing service upon them. I will not say how far intimacy may not justify you in immediate assault upon a man's conscience; but I shrink from any plan that seems to take it for granted that the poor are more wicked than the rich. Why don't we send missionaries to Belgravia? The outside of the cup and platter may sometimes be dirtier than the inside."
"Your missionary could hardly force his way through the servants to the boudoir or drawing-room."
"And the poor have no servants to defend them."
I have recorded this much of the conversation chiefly for the sake of introducing Miss Clare, who now spoke.
"Don't you think, sir," she asked, addressing my father, "that the help one can give to another must always depend on the measure in which one is free one's self?"
My father was silent—thinking. We were all silent. I said to myself, "There, papa! that is something after your own heart." With marked deference and solemnity he answered at length,—
"I have little doubt you are right, Miss Clare. That puts the question upon its own eternal foundation. The mode used must be of infinitely less importance than the person who uses it."