"Well, it's a court anyhow you fix it; and your parsons must be a bad lot to want a set of lawyers reg'larly trained to keep them in order."
"Perhaps Parson Brownlow would have been the better of a court of some kind," said the Bishop. "It seems to me that to be a minister of the Gospel at one moment, a colonel at another, and the Governor of a State at a third, illustrates the abuses which arise when such courts don't exist. With us, now, when a man once takes orders, he remains in them for the rest of his life."
"Even after he has concluded not to obey them, eh?" asked Mr Wog.
"Ah, Mr Wog," I interrupted, "before you return to the oil regions, you must make yourself acquainted with the enormous advantages connected with a State Church. You must grasp the idea that it is founded chiefly upon Acts of Parliament—that the clergy are only a paid branch of the Civil Service, exercising police functions of a very lofty and important character. The 'orders' come from the Queen, the 'Articles' are interpreted by the Privy Council, and 'England expects every clergyman to do his duty.' As I think some of the late doctrinal decisions of the judicial committee are questionable, I am drawing up a bill for the reform of the Protestant religion, and for the addition of a fortieth article to the existing thirty-nine. If I can carry it through both Houses of Parliament, all the convocations in Christendom cannot prevent the nation from accepting it as absolute divine truth; and I shall have the extreme satisfaction of feeling that I am manufacturing a creed for the masses, and thus securing a theological progress commensurate with our educational enlightenment. As long as the law of the land enables a majority of the Legislature to point out the straight and narrow way to the archbishops and bishops who have to lead their flocks along it, I have no fear for the future. It must be a comfort to feel, that if the worst comes to the worst, you have, as in the House of Commons, to lean upon 'my lord.'"
But the "dry ecclesiastical humour" of the Bishop, to which I have referred, did not evidently run in the same channel as mine.
"I don't think," he said, sternly, "that this is either the place or the mode in which to discuss subjects of so solemn a nature."
"I was only speaking of the system generally," I retorted, "and did not propose to enter here upon any doctrinal details of a really sacred character; those I leave to ecclesiastical dignitaries and learned divines with initials, to ventilate in a sweet Christian spirit in the columns of the daily press."
But the Bishop had already lit his candle, and with an abrupt "good night," vanished.
"Really, Frank," said Dickiefield, "it is not fair of you to drive my guests to bed before they have finished their pipes in that way. What you say may be perfectly true, but there can be no sort of advantage in stating it so broadly."
"My dear Dickiefield, how on earth is our friend Wog here to understand what his southern countryman would call 'our peculiar institution,' if somebody does not enlighten him? I want him, on his return, to point out to the President the advantage of substituting a State Church for the State rights which are so rapidly disappearing." Whereupon we diverged into American politics; and I asked Grandon an hour later, as we went to bed, what he thought of my first missionary effort.