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.“Are you coming with us to church?” I enquired.“Thanks, no,” he courteously replied.“It’s not — exactly in my line, you know.It’s an excellent institution — for the poor.When I’m with my own folk, I go, just to set them an example.But I’m not known here: so I think I’ll excuse myself sitting out a sermon.Country-preachers are always so dull!”Arthur was silent till we were out of hearing.Then he said to himself, almost inaudibly, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”“Yes,” I assented: “no doubt that is the principle on which church-going rests.”“And when he does go,” he continued (our thoughts ran so much together, that our conversation was often slightly elliptical), “I suppose he repeats the words ‘I believe in the Communion of Saints’?”But by this time we had reached the little church, into which a goodly stream of worshipers, consisting mainly of fishermen and their families, was flowing.The service would have been pronounced by any modern aesthetic religionist — or religious aesthete, which is it? — to be crude and cold: to me, coming fresh from the ever-advancing developments of a London church under a soi-disant ‘Catholic’ Rector, it was unspeakably refreshing.There was no theatrical procession of demure little choristers, trying their best not to simper under the admiring gaze of the congregation: the people’s share in the service was taken by the people themselves, unaided, except that a few good voices, judiciously posted here and there among them, kept the singing from going too far astray.There was no murdering of the noble music, contained in the Bible and the Liturgy, by its recital in a dead monotone, with no more expression than a mechanical talking-doll.No, the prayers were prayed, the lessons were read, and best of all the sermon was talked; and I found myself repeating, as we left the church, the words of Jacob, when he ‘awaked out of his sleep.’ “’Surely the Lord is in this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’”“Yes,” said Arthur, apparently in answer to my thoughts, “those ‘high’ services are fast becoming pure Formalism.More and more the people are beginning to regard them as ‘performances,’ in which they only ‘assist’ in the French sense.And it is specially bad for the little boys.They’d be much less self-conscious as pantomime-fairies.With all that dressing-up, and stagy-entrances and exits, and being always en evidence, no wonder if they’re eaten up with vanity, the blatant little coxcombs!”When we passed the Hall on our return, we found the Earl and Lady Muriel sitting out in the garden.Eric had gone for a stroll.We joined them, and the conversation soon turned on the sermon we had just heard, the subject of which was ‘selfishness.’“What a change has come over our pulpits,” Arthur remarked, “since the time when Paley gave that utterly selfish definition of virtue, ‘the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness’!”Lady Muriel looked at him enquiringly, but she seemed to have learned by intuition, what years of experience had taught me, that the way to elicit Arthur’s deepest thoughts was neither to assent nor dissent, but simply to listen.“At that time,” he went on, “a great tidal wave of selfishness was sweeping over human thought.Right and Wrong had somehow been transformed into Gain and Loss, and Religion had become a sort of commercial transaction.We may be thankful that our preachers are beginning to take a nobler view of life.”“But is it not taught again and again in the Bible?” I ventured to ask.“Not in the Bible as a whole,” said Arthur.“In the Old Testament, no doubt, rewards and punishments are constantly appealed to as motives for action.That teaching is best for children, and the Israelites seem to have been, mentally, utter children.We guide our children thus, at first: but we appeal, as soon as possible, to their innate sense of Right and Wrong: and, when that stage is safely past, we appeal to the highest motive of all, the desire for likeness to, and union with, the Supreme Good.I think you will find that to be the teaching of the Bible, as a whole, beginning with ‘that thy days may be long in the land,’ and ending with ‘be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’”We were silent for awhile, and then Arthur went off on another tack.“Look at the literature of Hymns, now.How cankered it is, through and through, with selfishness! There are few human compositions more utterly degraded than some modern Hymns!”I quoted the stanza“Whatever, Lord, we tend to Thee,Repaid a thousandfold shall be,Then gladly will we give to Thee,Giver of all!’“Yes,” he said grimly: “that is the typical stanza.And the very last charity-sermon I heard was infected with it.After giving many good reasons for charity, the preacher wound up with ‘and, for all you give, you will be repaid a thousandfold!’ Oh the utter meanness of such a motive, to be put before men who do know what self-sacrifice is, who can appreciate generosity and heroism! Talk of Original Sin!” he went on with increasing bitterness.“Can you have a stronger proof of the Original Goodness there must be in this nation, than the fact that Religion has been preached to us, as a commercial speculation, for a century, and that we still believe in a God?”“It couldn’t have gone on so long,” Lady Muriel musingly remarked, “if the Opposition hadn’t been practically silenced — put under what the French call la cloture.Surely in any lecture-hall, or in private society, such teaching would soon have been hooted down?”“I trust so,” said Arthur: “and, though I don’t want to see ‘brawling in church’ legalised, I must say that our preachers enjoy an enormous privilege — which they ill deserve, and which they misuse terribly.We put our man into a pulpit, and we virtually tell him ‘Now, you may stand there and talk to us for half-an-hour.We won’t interrupt you by so much as a word! You shall have it all your own way!’ And what does he give us in return? Shallow twaddle, that, if it were addressed to you over a dinner-table, you would think ‘Does the man take me for a fool?’”The return of Eric from his walk checked the tide of Arthur’s eloquence, and, after a few minutes’ talk on more conventional topics, we took our leave.Lady Muriel walked with us to the gate.“You have given me much to think about,” she said earnestly, as she gave Arthur her hand.“I’m so glad you came in!” And her words brought a real glow of pleasure into that pale worn face of his.On the Tuesday, as Arthur did not seem equal to more walking, I took a long stroll by myself, having stipulated that he was not to give the whole day to his books, but was to meet me at the Hall at about tea-time.On my way back, I passed the Station just as the afternoon-train came in sight, and sauntered down the stairs to see it come in.But there was little to gratify my idle curiosity: and, when the train was empty, and the platform clear, I found it was about time to be moving on, if I meant to reach the Hall by five.As I approached the end of the platform, from which a steep irregular wooden staircase conducted to the upper world, I noticed two passengers, who had evidently arrived by the train, but who, oddly enough, had entirely escaped my notice, though the arrivals had been so few
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