“Yes. But, after all, can we fairly lay that sin on Oxford? Surely, whatever may be growing up side by side with it, there's more Christianity here than almost anywhere else.”
“Plenty of common-room Christianity—belief in a dead God. There, I have never said it to anyone but you, but that is the slough we have to get out of. Don't think that I despair for us. We shall do it yet; but it will be sore work, stripping off the comfortable wine-party religion in which we are wrapped up—work for our strongest and our wisest.”
“And yet you think of leaving?”
“There are other reasons. I will tell you some day. But now, to turn to other matters, how have you been getting on this last year? You write so seldom that I am all behind-hand.”
“Oh, much the same as usual.”
“Then you are still like one of those who went out to David?”
“No, I'm not in debt.”
“But discontented?”
“Pretty much like you there, Jack. However, content is no virtue, that I can see, while there's anything to mend. Who is going to be contented with game-preserving, and corn-laws, and grinding the faces of the poor? David's camp was a better place than Saul's, any day.”
Hardy got up, opened a drawer, and took out a bundle of papers, which Tom recognized as the Wessex Freeman. He felt rather uncomfortable, as his friend seated himself again, and began looking them over.