"Why, Jones and I both pretend to some renown."
"Are they Gregorian?"
"I should say Stentorian was a better description, for, between ourselves, Jones, in the Nottingham Ale, might be mistaken for an angry bull."
What the denouement of the conversation was I don't know, for Rowdy's voice rose above the din—
"Faith expires"—he said—"hope grows dim—but ceremony, the last refuge of religion, remains. We lose the trustingness that makes us lay the promises of holy writ to our hearts,—the childlike simplicity that lifts us into a world where truth erects her palace on gorgeous clouds, which to us take the semblance and solidity of mountains,—we lose the thrill, the dread, the love,—but we can retain the surplice, the albe, and the stole. The cloud that seemed a mountain has disappeared; the confidence that sustained us has gone,—but we can erect churches according to the strictest rules of architecture, cover the table with cloth of gold,—have daily service, have some fixed, irrevocable, eternal rule, and feel ourselves the slaves of hours and postures;—a slavery befitting those who are left to grope in the darkness of their own souls for a belief, and find nothing to support, to bless, or cheer them."
"Do you advocate the externals of devotion, Mr Rowdy, after the reality of religion has left the heart?" I inquired.
"Certainly, sir," he said. "If you waited for the internal religion you talk of, you would never enter a church. And pray, sir, what is internal, and what is external? Your heart is a piece of flesh, your font is a piece of stone; why shouldn't holiness reside in the one as well as in the other?"
"It strikes me, Mr Rowdy, to be rather hypocritical to go through the forms of religion without the spirit," I urged again.
"And what is life but hypocrisy?—your very clothes make you a hypocrite: without them you would resemble a forked radish, but you disfigure yourself in surtout and pantaloons. Go through the ceremonies, sir—the feeling in time will come; dig your trenches deep, and the rain will pour into them and burn the sacrifice of your altar with fire; kneel when you have no devotion, bend yourself to decrees and ordinances when you have no humility and no faith; and, entering on that course with the scoff of Voltaire, you will emerge from it with the sanctity of Vincent de Paul."
"On the contrary, sir, I maintain," said I, "that, if you persist in these miserable bonds of an outward obedience, in the expectation that they will promote your advance in goodness, you bring on yourself the condemnation of the Pharisee; you may enter them with the faith of your friend Mr Swallowlies, but you will leave them ere long with the sentiments of the infidel and apostate Strauss."