“I'm sorry, my boy, very sorry!”
“Thank you, uncle.”
“But it all comes, you see, of the ridiculous idea that we are a Christian nation! Such a thing couldn't have occurred at the shrine of a pagan god!”
“It was only a proprietary church, uncle. I was much to blame.”
“I do not deny that you have acted unwisely, but what difference does that make, my boy? To sell a church seems like the climax of irreverence; but they are doing as bad every day. If you want to see what times the Church has fallen on, look at the advertisements in your religious papers—your Benefice and Church Patronage Gazette, and so forth. A traffic, John, a slave traffic, worse than anything in Africa, where they sell bodies, not souls!”
“It is a crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven,” said John; “but it is the Establishment that is to blame, not the Church, uncle.”
“We are a nation of money-lenders, my boy, and the Church is the worst usurer of them all, with its learned divines in scarlet hoods, who hold shares in music halls, and its Fathers in God living at ease and leasing out public-houses. You have been lending money on usury too, and on a bad security. What are you going to do now?”
“Go on with my work, uncle, and do two hours where I did one before.”
“And get yourself kicked where you got yourself kicked before!”
“Why not? If God puts ten pounds on a man, he gives him strength to bear twenty.”