We were a merry party, all in all, passing the time with genial and general conversation—and, occasionally, graver talk—as the mood suited us. The cheerful voices of the children, who were packed as tightly as herrings in a barrel in the bows of our craft, and their happy laughter, chimed in with the wash of the tide as it swept by the sides of our gallant barque, hurrying down to meet the flood at Gravesend. The larks were singing madly in the blue sky overhead. Each and all completed the harmony of the scene, affording us enjoyment in turn.
Disgusted apparently with our merriment and frivolity, Miss Spight, shortly after we started, introduced a polemical discussion.
“My dear sir,” said she to the vicar, our captain and coxswain in chief, who stately sat in the sternsheets of the gondola, “don’t you think Romanism is getting very rife in the parish? They are building a new nunnery, I hear, in the main road; and they are going to set about a chapel, too, I’m told.”
“That won’t hurt us,” said the vicar, sententiously. He disliked sectarian disputes excessively, and always avoided them if he could.
“But, don’t you think,” persisted Miss Spight, “that we ought to prevent this in some way?”
“I was going to speak to you on the very point to-day, sir,” said Mr Mawley, before the vicar could answer. “Had we not better have a course of controversial lectures, each giving one in turn?”
“No, Mawley,” replied the vicar, “since I have had the living, I have never yet permitted sectarian disputations to have a place in my pulpit; and, never will I do so as long as I live! We were instructed to preach the Gospel by our Saviour, not to wage war against this or that creed; and the Gospel is one of peace and love. Don’t you remember how Saint John, when he was upwards of fourscore years, continually taught this by his constant text, ‘Little children, love one another?’ Let us allow men to judge us by our works. The labour of Protestantism will not be accomplished by the pharisaical mode of priding ourselves on our faith, and damning that of every one else! Our mission is to preach the Gospel pure and simple. Too much time, too much money, too much of true religion is wasted, in our common custom of trying to proselytise others! We should look at home first, Mawley.”
“Still, sir,” said the curate, “it is surely our mission to convert the heathen?”
“I do not argue against that,” said the vicar. “God forbid that I should! But what I say is, that we are too apt, in seeking for foreign fields, to neglect the duty that lies nearer to us at home.”
“It is a noble work, converting the heathen, though,” said Miss Spight.