On the Easter Monday his wife discovered that their charwoman had decamped with a sheet and two blankets, and he laid that sin at the door of the new source of corruption he had discovered, called for strong tea, wrapped a wet towel round his aching head, and wrote the first of his famous series of articles. The following is an abstract under the heading:

“Non Angli sed Romani:

The Enemy within our Gates.

There is a church in this town, for so long devoted under the leadership of our great and sainted Humphrey Clay, a church where Sunday after Sunday, and on week-days also, blasphemy is committed, blasphemy and a painted mummery. I have been to this church. With my own eyes I have seen the finger-marks of the painted, scented hand of Rome. In this church I saw three priests—priests, not ministers—clothed like actors in a theatre. They wore purple and fine linen and they carried funny little hats in their hands. They had decked up two young laymen in purple and silk and fine embroidery, and their feet trod upon rich carpets, with gleaming brass stair-rods. The very air was thick and oppressive with the smell of flowers, and to this was added the fulsome stench of incense, carried by conceited, mincing little boys. No pen, least of all mine, could describe the impiousness of the processions, the bowings, the scrapings, the befouling and vulgarisation of things sacred that happen in this church, this so-called church, which is in reality a booth, a theatre. Why, the very costumes are indecent. The choir-boys do not wear surplices, but little laced shirts or shifts which do not even cover their spinal bulbs. Their behaviour, their demeanour, is an affront to all truly religious-minded persons. Had I not remembered that I was in the House of God I should have spat in the face of the arch-mummer as he passed me and bade him begone to Babylon whence he came. Who is this man? Why should he be suffered to defile the religion which he is supposed to practise? Why should this play-actor be permitted to strut and mow and paw the air in the Holy of Holies? Three times at least I saw him change his costume—in public! And each time he was assisted with a mock solemnity by the valet whom he is pleased to call an acolyte. They say this man is a gentleman, the kinsman of a noble family, a rich man, one who has kept his carriage. Let him not play the priest. Humphrey Clay, of blessed memory, was the son of a carpenter, a working carpenter in this town, but before his Maker he was a gentleman indeed. It is but twelve months since our bishop consecrated the memorial which is the crowning edifice that pinnacles the glorious career of Humphrey Clay. Can that same bishop within his diocese tolerate the splendid memorial to the one and the impious practices of the other man? I say he cannot. Such churches as this have not hitherto been tolerated in our part of the town. Citizens, shall we endure it now?

N.B.—Further articles on the subject will appear until something is done. If those in authority will not move, we shall take the matter into our own hands.”

Francis read this effusion and was hurt by it. Since he had thumped his brother William on the nose he had quarrelled with no man and deliberately hurt none. Behind the wild writing he could feel the torment, and he was sorry. He felt that he was to a certain extent to blame because he had invited the man to his church in a challenging spirit, and so had perhaps increased prejudice in him. He tried to write to Flynn but could find nothing to say. As he sifted his thoughts he could only discover that he wished his church to be free. All sorts and conditions of men were free to come and free to stay away. He had once found one of his sidesmen turning a ragged old beggar-woman out, and had reproved him and led the old woman to a pew. She spat on the floor and sat fingering an old clay-pipe, but, to Francis’s way of thinking, these things might not be unacceptable to the God he honoured, however distasteful they might be to human creatures. The church, then, was free, and Francis desired only to make it pleasing and attractive to those who came to it, to have it a place of beauty amid so much ugliness. The Saturday before Easter had been one of the happiest he ever remembered—a day of hard work in the church, surrounded with young people all gay and blithe and busy with the flowers and draperies and vestments. One such day, he felt, could do much to redeem the waste and folly of years.

However, it was all odious and disgusting to Flynn, and Francis sighed as he reached out for his tin of bird’s-eye and filled his pipe. The parrot scrambled out of its cage, shuffled along the floor and climbed up the back of his chair, perched on his shoulders, and stood combing its beak through his beard.

[V
HOSTILITIES]

Thou liftest me up above those that rise up against me; thou hast delivered me from the violent man.
PSALM xviii. 48.

THE dead play a not altogether disproportionate part in the affairs of the living. There are so many more of them. The thought would be desperate but for the reflection that in all probability the most numerous of all are the unborn. The Creator may at any moment get tired of the eternal monotonous repetition of birth and death, but no man or woman will ever believe that. We get joy out of it, and His is the sum of all our joy—the dead, the living, and the unborn.