Chapter: Pryer had done well to warn Ernest against promiscuous house to house
visitation.  He had not gone outside Mrs Jupp's street door, and yet what
had been the result?

Mr Holt had put him in bodily fear; Mr and Mrs Baxter had nearly made a
Methodist of him; Mr Shaw had undermined his faith in the Resurrection;
Miss Snow's charms had ruined--or would have done so but for an
accident--his moral character.  As for Miss Maitland, he had done his
best to ruin hers, and had damaged himself gravely and irretrievably in
consequence.  The only lodger who had done him no harm was the bellows'
mender, whom he had not visited.

Other young clergymen, much greater fools in many respects than he, would
not have got into these scrapes.  He seemed to have developed an aptitude
for mischief almost from the day of his having been ordained.  He could
hardly preach without making some horrid _faux pas_.  He preached one
Sunday morning when the Bishop was at his Rector's church, and made his
sermon turn upon the question what kind of little cake it was that the
widow of Zarephath had intended making when Elijah found her gathering a
few sticks.  He demonstrated that it was a seed cake.  The sermon was
really very amusing, and more than once he saw a smile pass over the sea
of faces underneath him.  The Bishop was very angry, and gave my hero a
severe reprimand in the vestry after service was over; the only excuse he
could make was that he was preaching _ex tempore_, had not thought of
this particular point till he was actually in the pulpit, and had then
been carried away by it.

Another time he preached upon the barren fig-tree, and described the
hopes of the owner as he watched the delicate blossom unfold, and give
promise of such beautiful fruit in autumn.  Next day he received a letter
from a botanical member of his congregation who explained to him that
this could hardly have been, inasmuch as the fig produces its fruit first
and blossoms inside the fruit, or so nearly so that no flower is
perceptible to an ordinary observer.  This last, however, was an accident
which might have happened to any one but a scientist or an inspired
writer.

The only excuse I can make for him is that he was very young--not yet
four and twenty--and that in mind as in body, like most of those who in
the end come to think for themselves, he was a slow grower.  By far the
greater part, moreover, of his education had been an attempt, not so much
to keep him in blinkers as to gouge his eyes out altogether.

But to return to my story.  It transpired afterwards that Miss Maitland
had had no intention of giving Ernest in charge when she ran out of Mrs
Jupp's house.  She was running away because she was frightened, but
almost the first person whom she ran against had happened to be a
policeman of a serious turn of mind, who wished to gain a reputation for
activity.  He stopped her, questioned her, frightened her still more, and
it was he rather than Miss Maitland, who insisted on giving my hero in
charge to himself and another constable.

Towneley was still in Mrs Jupp's house when the policeman came.  He had
heard a disturbance, and going down to Ernest's room while Miss Maitland
was out of doors, had found him lying, as it were, stunned at the foot of
the moral precipice over which he had that moment fallen.  He saw the
whole thing at a glance, but before he could take action, the policemen
came in and action became impossible.

He asked Ernest who were his friends in London.  Ernest at first wanted
not to say, but Towneley soon gave him to understand that he must do as
he was bid, and selected myself from the few whom he had named.  "Writes
for the stage, does he?" said Towneley.  "Does he write comedy?"  Ernest
thought Towneley meant that I ought to write tragedy, and said he was
afraid I wrote burlesque.  "Oh, come, come," said Towneley, "that will do
famously.  I will go and see him at once."  But on second thoughts he
determined to stay with Ernest and go with him to the police court.  So
he sent Mrs Jupp for me.  Mrs Jupp hurried so fast to fetch me, that in
spite of the weather's being still cold she was "giving out," as she
expressed it, in streams.  The poor old wretch would have taken a cab,
but she had no money and did not like to ask Towneley to give her some.  I
saw that something very serious had happened, but was not prepared for
anything so deplorable as what Mrs Jupp actually told me.  As for Mrs
Jupp, she said her heart had been jumping out of its socket and back
again ever since.

I got her into a cab with me, and we went off to the police station.  She
talked without ceasing.

"And if the neighbours do say cruel things about me, I'm sure it ain't no
thanks to _him_ if they're true.  Mr Pontifex never took a bit o' notice
of me no more than if I had been his sister.  Oh, it's enough to make
anyone's back bone curdle.  Then I thought perhaps my Rose might get on
better with him, so I set her to dust him and clean him as though I were
busy, and gave her such a beautiful clean new pinny, but he never took no
notice of her no more than he did of me, and she didn't want no
compliment neither, she wouldn't have taken not a shilling from him,
though he had offered it, but he didn't seem to know anything at all.  I
can't make out what the young men are a-coming to; I wish the horn may
blow for me and the worms take me this very night, if it's not enough to
make a woman stand before God and strike the one half on 'em silly to see
the way they goes on, and many an honest girl has to go home night after
night without so much as a fourpenny bit and paying three and sixpence a
week rent, and not a shelf nor cupboard in the place and a dead wall in
front of the window.

"It's not Mr Pontifex," she continued, "that's so bad, he's good at
heart.  He never says nothing unkind.  And then there's his dear eyes--but
when I speak about that to my Rose she calls me an old fool and says I
ought to be poleaxed.  It's that Pryer as I can't abide.  Oh he!  He
likes to wound a woman's feelings he do, and to chuck anything in her
face, he do--he likes to wind a woman up and to wound her down."  (Mrs
Jupp pronounced "wound" as though it rhymed to "sound.")  "It's a
gentleman's place to soothe a woman, but he, he'd like to tear her hair
out by handfuls.  Why, he told me to my face that I was a-getting old;
old indeed! there's not a woman in London knows my age except Mrs Davis
down in the Old Kent Road, and beyond a haricot vein in one of my legs
I'm as young as ever I was.  Old indeed!  There's many a good tune played
on an old fiddle.  I hate his nasty insinuendos."

Even if I had wanted to stop her, I could not have done so.  She said a
great deal more than I have given above.  I have left out much because I
could not remember it, but still more because it was really impossible
for me to print it.

When we got to the police station I found Towneley and Ernest already
there.  The charge was one of assault, but not aggravated by serious
violence.  Even so, however, it was lamentable enough, and we both saw
that our young friend would have to pay dearly for his inexperience.  We
tried to bail him out for the night, but the Inspector would not accept
bail, so we were forced to leave him.

Towneley then went back to Mrs Jupp's to see if he could find Miss
Maitland and arrange matters with her.  She was not there, but he traced
her to the house of her father, who lived at Camberwell.  The father was
furious and would not hear of any intercession on Towneley's part.  He
was a Dissenter, and glad to make the most of any scandal against a
clergyman; Towneley, therefore, was obliged to return unsuccessful.

Next morning, Towneley--who regarded Ernest as a drowning man, who must
be picked out of the water somehow or other if possible, irrespective of
the way in which he got into it--called on me, and we put the matter into
the hands of one of the best known attorneys of the day.  I was greatly
pleased with Towneley, and thought it due to him to tell him what I had
told no one else.  I mean that Ernest would come into his aunt's money in
a few years' time, and would therefore then be rich.

Towneley was doing all he could before this, but I knew that the
knowledge I had imparted to him would make him feel as though Ernest was
more one of his own class, and had therefore a greater claim upon his
good offices.  As for Ernest himself, his gratitude was greater than
could be expressed in words.  I have heard him say that he can call to
mind many moments, each one of which might well pass for the happiest of
his life, but that this night stands clearly out as the most painful that
he ever passed, yet so kind and considerate was Towneley that it was
quite bearable.

But with all the best wishes in the world neither Towneley nor I could do
much to help beyond giving our moral support.  Our attorney told us that
the magistrate before whom Ernest would appear was very severe on cases
of this description, and that the fact of his being a clergyman would
tell against him.  "Ask for no remand," he said, "and make no defence.  We
will call Mr Pontifex's rector and you two gentlemen as witnesses for
previous good character.  These will be enough.  Let us then make a
profound apology and beg the magistrate to deal with the case summarily
instead of sending it for trial.  If you can get this, believe me, your
young friend will be better out of it than he has any right to expect."





This advice, besides being obviously sensible, would end in saving Ernest
both time and suspense of mind, so we had no hesitation in adopting it.
The case was called on about eleven o'clock, but we got it adjourned till
three, so as to give time for Ernest to set his affairs as straight as he
could, and to execute a power of attorney enabling me to act for him as I
should think fit while he was in prison.

Then all came out about Pryer and the College of Spiritual Pathology.
Ernest had even greater difficulty in making a clean breast of this than
he had had in telling us about Miss Maitland, but he told us all, and the
upshot was that he had actually handed over to Pryer every halfpenny that
he then possessed with no other security than Pryer's I.O.U.'s for the
amount.  Ernest, though still declining to believe that Pryer could be
guilty of dishonourable conduct, was becoming alive to the folly of what
he had been doing; he still made sure, however, of recovering, at any
rate, the greater part of his property as soon as Pryer should have had
time to sell.  Towneley and I were of a different opinion, but we did not
say what we thought.

It was dreary work waiting all the morning amid such unfamiliar and
depressing surroundings.  I thought how the Psalmist had exclaimed with
quiet irony, "One day in thy courts is better than a thousand," and I
thought that I could utter a very similar sentiment in respect of the
Courts in which Towneley and I were compelled to loiter.  At last, about
three o'clock the case was called on, and we went round to the part of
the court which is reserved for the general public, while Ernest was
taken into the prisoner's dock.  As soon as he had collected himself
sufficiently he recognised the magistrate as the old gentleman who had
spoken to him in the train on the day he was leaving school, and saw, or
thought he saw, to his great grief, that he too was recognised.

Mr Ottery, for this was our attorney's name, took the line he had
proposed.  He called no other witnesses than the rector, Towneley and
myself, and threw himself on the mercy of the magistrate.  When he had
concluded, the magistrate spoke as follows: "Ernest Pontifex, yours is
one of the most painful cases that I have ever had to deal with.  You
have been singularly favoured in your parentage and education.  You have
had before you the example of blameless parents, who doubtless instilled
into you from childhood the enormity of the offence which by your own
confession you have committed.  You were sent to one of the best public
schools in England.  It is not likely that in the healthy atmosphere of
such a school as Roughborough you can have come across contaminating
influences; you were probably, I may say certainly, impressed at school
with the heinousness of any attempt to depart from the strictest chastity
until such time as you had entered into a state of matrimony.  At
Cambridge you were shielded from impurity by every obstacle which
virtuous and vigilant authorities could devise, and even had the
obstacles been fewer, your parents probably took care that your means
should not admit of your throwing money away upon abandoned characters.
At night proctors patrolled the street and dogged your steps if you tried
to go into any haunt where the presence of vice was suspected.  By day
the females who were admitted within the college walls were selected
mainly on the score of age and ugliness.  It is hard to see what more can
be done for any young man than this.  For the last four or five months
you have been a clergyman, and if a single impure thought had still
remained within your mind, ordination should have removed it:
nevertheless, not only does it appear that your mind is as impure as
though none of the influences to which I have referred had been brought
to bear upon it, but it seems as though their only result had been
this--that you have not even the common sense to be able to distinguish
between a respectable girl and a prostitute.

"If I were to take a strict view of my duty I should commit you for
trial, but in consideration of this being your first offence, I shall
deal leniently with you and sentence you to imprisonment with hard labour
for six calendar months."

Towneley and I both thought there was a touch of irony in the
magistrate's speech, and that he could have given a lighter sentence if
he would, but that was neither here nor there.  We obtained leave to see
Ernest for a few minutes before he was removed to Coldbath Fields, where
he was to serve his term, and found him so thankful to have been
summarily dealt with that he hardly seemed to care about the miserable
plight in which he was to pass the next six months.  When he came out, he
said, he would take what remained of his money, go off to America or
Australia and never be heard of more.

We left him full of this resolve, I, to write to Theobald, and also to
instruct my solicitor to get Ernest's money out of Pryer's hands, and
Towneley to see the reporters and keep the case out of the newspapers.  He
was successful as regards all the higher-class papers.  There was only
one journal, and that of the lowest class, which was incorruptible.





I saw my solicitor at once, but when I tried to write to Theobald, I
found it better to say I would run down and see him.  I therefore
proposed this, asking him to meet me at the station, and hinting that I
must bring bad news about his son.  I knew he would not get my letter
more than a couple of hours before I should see him, and thought the
short interval of suspense might break the shock of what I had to say.

Never do I remember to have halted more between two opinions than on my
journey to Battersby upon this unhappy errand.  When I thought of the
little sallow-faced lad whom I had remembered years before, of the long
and savage cruelty with which he had been treated in childhood--cruelty
none the less real for having been due to ignorance and stupidity rather
than to deliberate malice; of the atmosphere of lying and self-laudatory
hallucination in which he had been brought up; of the readiness the boy
had shown to love anything that would be good enough to let him, and of
how affection for his parents, unless I am much mistaken, had only died
in him because it had been killed anew, again and again and again, each
time that it had tried to spring.  When I thought of all this I felt as
though, if the matter had rested with me, I would have sentenced Theobald
and Christina to mental suffering even more severe than that which was
about to fall upon them.  But on the other hand, when I thought of
Theobald's own childhood, of that dreadful old George Pontifex his
father, of John and Mrs John, and of his two sisters, when again I
thought of Christina's long years of hope deferred that maketh the heart
sick, before she was married, of the life she must have led at
Crampsford, and of the surroundings in the midst of which she and her
husband both lived at Battersby, I felt as though the wonder was that
misfortunes so persistent had not been followed by even graver
retribution.

Poor people!  They had tried to keep their ignorance of the world from
themselves by calling it the pursuit of heavenly things, and then
shutting their eyes to anything that might give them trouble.  A son
having been born to them they had shut his eyes also as far as was
practicable.  Who could blame them?  They had chapter and verse for
everything they had either done or left undone; there is no better
thumbed precedent than that for being a clergyman and a clergyman's wife.
In what respect had they differed from their neighbours?  How did their
household differ from that of any other clergyman of the better sort from
one end of England to the other?  Why then should it have been upon them,
of all people in the world, that this tower of Siloam had fallen?

Surely it was the tower of Siloam that was naught rather than those who
stood under it; it was the system rather than the people that was at
fault.  If Theobald and his wife had but known more of the world and of
the things that are therein, they would have done little harm to anyone.
Selfish they would have always been, but not more so than may very well
be pardoned, and not more than other people would be.  As it was, the
case was hopeless; it would be no use their even entering into their
mothers' wombs and being born again.  They must not only be born again
but they must be born again each one of them of a new father and of a new
mother and of a different line of ancestry for many generations before
their minds could become supple enough to learn anew.  The only thing to
do with them was to humour them and make the best of them till they
died--and be thankful when they did so.

Theobald got my letter as I had expected, and met me at the station
nearest to Battersby.  As I walked back with him towards his own house I
broke the news to him as gently as I could.  I pretended that the whole
thing was in great measure a mistake, and that though Ernest no doubt had
had intentions which he ought to have resisted, he had not meant going
anything like the length which Miss Maitland supposed.  I said we had
felt how much appearances were against him, and had not dared to set up
this defence before the magistrate, though we had no doubt about its
being the true one.

Theobald acted with a readier and acuter moral sense than I had given him
credit for.

"I will have nothing more to do with him," he exclaimed promptly, "I will
never see his face again; do not let him write either to me or to his
mother; we know of no such person.  Tell him you have seen me, and that
from this day forward I shall put him out of my mind as though he had
never been born.  I have been a good father to him, and his mother
idolised him; selfishness and ingratitude have been the only return we
have ever had from him; my hope henceforth must be in my remaining
children."

I told him how Ernest's fellow curate had got hold of his money, and
hinted that he might very likely be penniless, or nearly so, on leaving
prison.  Theobald did not seem displeased at this, but added soon
afterwards: "If this proves to be the case, tell him from me that I will
give him a hundred pounds if he will tell me through you when he will
have it paid, but tell him not to write and thank me, and say that if he
attempts to open up direct communication either with his mother or
myself, he shall not have a penny of the money."

Knowing what I knew, and having determined on violating Miss Pontifex's
instructions should the occasion arise, I did not think Ernest would be
any the worse for a complete estrangement from his family, so I
acquiesced more readily in what Theobald had proposed than that gentleman
may have expected.

Thinking it better that I should not see Christina, I left Theobald near
Battersby and walked back to the station.  On my way I was pleased to
reflect that Ernest's father was less of a fool than I had taken him to
be, and had the greater hopes, therefore, that his son's blunders might
be due to postnatal, rather than congenital misfortunes.  Accidents which
happen to a man before he is born, in the persons of his ancestors, will,
if he remembers them at all, leave an indelible impression on him; they
will have moulded his character so that, do what he will, it is hardly
possible for him to escape their consequences.  If a man is to enter into
the Kingdom of Heaven, he must do so, not only as a little child, but as
a little embryo, or rather as a little zoosperm--and not only this, but
as one that has come of zoosperms which have entered into the Kingdom of
Heaven before him for many generations.  Accidents which occur for the
first time, and belong to the period since a man's last birth, are not,
as a general rule, so permanent in their effects, though of course they
may sometimes be so.  At any rate, I was not displeased at the view which
Ernest's father took of the situation.





After Ernest had been sentenced, he was taken back to the cells to wait
for the van which should take him to Coldbath Fields, where he was to
serve his term.

He was still too stunned and dazed by the suddenness with which events
had happened during the last twenty-four hours to be able to realise his
position.  A great chasm had opened between his past and future;
nevertheless he breathed, his pulse beat, he could think and speak.  It
seemed to him that he ought to be prostrated by the blow that had fallen
on him, but he was not prostrated; he had suffered from many smaller
laches far more acutely.  It was not until he thought of the pain his
disgrace would inflict on his father and mother that he felt how readily
he would have given up all he had, rather than have fallen into his
present plight.  It would break his mother's heart.  It must, he knew it
would--and it was he who had done this.

He had had a headache coming on all the forenoon, but as he thought of
his father and mother, his pulse quickened, and the pain in his head
suddenly became intense.  He could hardly walk to the van, and he found
its motion insupportable.  On reaching the prison he was too ill to walk
without assistance across the hall to the corridor or gallery where
prisoners are marshalled on their arrival.  The prison warder, seeing at
once that he was a clergyman, did not suppose he was shamming, as he
might have done in the case of an old gaol-bird; he therefore sent for
the doctor.  When this gentleman arrived, Ernest was declared to be
suffering from an incipient attack of brain fever, and was taken away to
the infirmary.  Here he hovered for the next two months between life and
death, never in full possession of his reason and often delirious, but at
last, contrary to the expectation of both doctor and nurse, he began
slowly to recover.

It is said that those who have been nearly drowned, find the return to
consciousness much more painful than the loss of it had been, and so it
was with my hero.  As he lay helpless and feeble, it seemed to him a
refinement of cruelty that he had not died once for all during his
delirium.  He thought he should still most likely recover only to sink a
little later on from shame and sorrow; nevertheless from day to day he
mended, though so slowly that he could hardly realise it to himself.  One
afternoon, however, about three weeks after he had regained
consciousness, the nurse who tended him, and who had been very kind to
him, made some little rallying sally which amused him; he laughed, and as
he did so, she clapped her hands and told him he would be a man again.
The spark of hope was kindled, and again he wished to live.  Almost from
that moment his thoughts began to turn less to the horrors of the past,
and more to the best way of meeting the future.

His worst pain was on behalf of his father and mother, and how he should
again face them.  It still seemed to him that the best thing both for him
and them would be that he should sever himself from them completely, take
whatever money he could recover from Pryer, and go to some place in the
uttermost parts of the earth, where he should never meet anyone who had
known him at school or college, and start afresh.  Or perhaps he might go
to the gold fields in California or Australia, of which such wonderful
accounts were then heard; there he might even make his fortune, and
return as an old man many years hence, unknown to everyone, and if so, he
would live at Cambridge.  As he built these castles in the air, the spark
of life became a flame, and he longed for health, and for the freedom
which, now that so much of his sentence had expired, was not after all
very far distant.

Then things began to shape themselves more definitely.  Whatever happened
he would be a clergyman no longer.  It would have been practically
impossible for him to have found another curacy, even if he had been so
minded, but he was not so minded.  He hated the life he had been leading
ever since he had begun to read for orders; he could not argue about it,
but simply he loathed it and would have no more of it.  As he dwelt on
the prospect of becoming a layman again, however disgraced, he rejoiced
at what had befallen him, and found a blessing in this very imprisonment
which had at first seemed such an unspeakable misfortune.

Perhaps the shock of so great a change in his surroundings had
accelerated changes in his opinions, just as the cocoons of silkworms,
when sent in baskets by rail, hatch before their time through the novelty
of heat and jolting.  But however this may be, his belief in the stories
concerning the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ, and
hence his faith in all the other Christian miracles, had dropped off him
once and for ever.  The investigation he had made in consequence of Mr
Shaw's rebuke, hurried though it was, had left a deep impression upon
him, and now he was well enough to read he made the New Testament his
chief study, going through it in the spirit which Mr Shaw had desired of
him, that is to say as one who wished neither to believe nor disbelieve,
but cared only about finding out whether he ought to believe or no.  The
more he read in this spirit the more the balance seemed to lie in favour
of unbelief, till, in the end, all further doubt became impossible, and
he saw plainly enough that, whatever else might be true, the story that
Christ had died, come to life again, and been carried from earth through
clouds into the heavens could not now be accepted by unbiassed people.  It
was well he had found it out so soon.  In one way or another it was sure
to meet him sooner or later.  He would probably have seen it years ago if
he had not been hoodwinked by people who were paid for hoodwinking him.
What should he have done, he asked himself, if he had not made his
present discovery till years later when he was more deeply committed to
the life of a clergyman?  Should he have had the courage to face it, or
would he not more probably have evolved some excellent reason for
continuing to think as he had thought hitherto?  Should he have had the
courage to break away even from his present curacy?

He thought not, and knew not whether to be more thankful for having been
shown his error or for having been caught up and twisted round so that he
could hardly err farther, almost at the very moment of his having
discovered it.  The price he had had to pay for this boon was light as
compared with the boon itself.  What is too heavy a price to pay for
having duty made at once clear and easy of fulfilment instead of very
difficult?  He was sorry for his father and mother, and he was sorry for
Miss Maitland, but he was no longer sorry for himself.

It puzzled him, however, that he should not have known how much he had
hated being a clergyman till now.  He knew that he did not particularly
like it, but if anyone had asked him whether he actually hated it, he
would have answered no.  I suppose people almost always want something
external to themselves, to reveal to them their own likes and dislikes.
Our most assured likings have for the most part been arrived at neither
by introspection nor by any process of conscious reasoning, but by the
bounding forth of the heart to welcome the gospel proclaimed to it by
another.  We hear some say that such and such a thing is thus or thus,
and in a moment the train that has been laid within us, but whose
presence we knew not, flashes into consciousness and perception.

Only a year ago he had bounded forth to welcome Mr Hawke's sermon; since
then he had bounded after a College of Spiritual Pathology; now he was in
full cry after rationalism pure and simple; how could he be sure that his
present state of mind would be more lasting than his previous ones?  He
could not be certain, but he felt as though he were now on firmer ground
than he had ever been before, and no matter how fleeting his present
opinions might prove to be, he could not but act according to them till
he saw reason to change them.  How impossible, he reflected, it would
have been for him to do this, if he had remained surrounded by people
like his father and mother, or Pryer and Pryer's friends, and his rector.
He had been observing, reflecting, and assimilating all these months with
no more consciousness of mental growth than a school-boy has of growth of
body, but should he have been able to admit his growth to himself, and to
act up to his increased strength if he had remained in constant close
connection with people who assured him solemnly that he was under a
hallucination?  The combination against him was greater than his unaided
strength could have broken through, and he felt doubtful how far any
shock less severe than the one from which he was suffering would have
sufficed to free him.





As he lay on his bed day after day slowly recovering he woke up to the
fact which most men arrive at sooner or later, I mean that very few care
two straws about truth, or have any confidence that it is righter and
better to believe what is true than what is untrue, even though belief in
the untruth may seem at first sight most expedient.  Yet it is only these
few who can be said to believe anything at all; the rest are simply
unbelievers in disguise.  Perhaps, after all, these last are right.  They
have numbers and prosperity on their side.  They have all which the
rationalist appeals to as his tests of right and wrong.  Right, according
to him, is what seems right to the majority of sensible, well-to-do
people; we know of no safer criterion than this, but what does the
decision thus arrived at involve?  Simply this, that a conspiracy of
silence about things whose truth would be immediately apparent to
disinterested enquirers is not only tolerable but righteous on the part
of those who profess to be and take money for being _par excellence_
guardians and teachers of truth.

Ernest saw no logical escape from this conclusion.  He saw that belief on
the part of the early Christians in the miraculous nature of Christ's
Resurrection was explicable, without any supposition of miracle.  The
explanation lay under the eyes of anyone who chose to take a moderate
degree of trouble; it had been put before the world again and again, and
there had been no serious attempt to refute it.  How was it that Dean
Alford for example who had made the New Testament his speciality, could
not or would not see what was so obvious to Ernest himself?  Could it be
for any other reason than that he did not want to see it, and if so was
he not a traitor to the cause of truth?  Yes, but was he not also a
respectable and successful man, and were not the vast majority of
respectable and successful men, such for example, as all the bishops and
archbishops, doing exactly as Dean Alford did, and did not this make
their action right, no matter though it had been cannibalism or
infanticide, or even habitual untruthfulness of mind?

Monstrous, odious falsehood!  Ernest's feeble pulse quickened and his
pale face flushed as this hateful view of life presented itself to him in
all its logical consistency.  It was not the fact of most men being liars
that shocked him--that was all right enough; but even the momentary doubt
whether the few who were not liars ought not to become liars too.  There
was no hope left if this were so; if this were so, let him die, the
sooner the better.  "Lord," he exclaimed inwardly, "I don't believe one
word of it.  Strengthen Thou and confirm my disbelief."  It seemed to him
that he could never henceforth see a bishop going to consecration without
saying to himself: "There, but for the grace of God, went Ernest
Pontifex."  It was no doing of his.  He could not boast; if he had lived
in the time of Christ he might himself have been an early Christian, or
even an Apostle for aught he knew.  On the whole he felt that he had much
to be thankful for.

The conclusion, then, that it might be better to believe error than truth
should be ordered out of court at once, no matter by how clear a logic it
had been arrived at; but what was the alternative?  It was this, that our
criterion of truth--i.e. that truth is what commends itself to the great
majority of sensible and successful people--is not infallible.  The rule
is sound, and covers by far the greater number of cases, but it has its
exceptions.

He asked himself, what were they?  Ah! that was a difficult matter; there
were so many, and the rules which governed them were sometimes so subtle,
that mistakes always had and always would be made; it was just this that
made it impossible to reduce life to an exact science.  There was a rough
and ready rule-of-thumb test of truth, and a number of rules as regards
exceptions which could be mastered without much trouble, yet there was a
residue of cases in which decision was difficult--so difficult that a man
had better follow his instinct than attempt to decide them by any process
of reasoning.

Instinct then is the ultimate court of appeal.  And what is instinct?  It
is a mode of faith in the evidence of things not actually seen.  And so
my hero returned almost to the point from which he had started
originally, namely that the just shall live by faith.

And this is what the just--that is to say reasonable people--do as
regards those daily affairs of life which most concern them.  They settle
smaller matters by the exercise of their own deliberation.  More
important ones, such as the cure of their own bodies and the bodies of
those whom they love, the investment of their money, the extrication of
their affairs from any serious mess--these things they generally entrust
to others of whose capacity they know little save from general report;
they act therefore on the strength of faith, not of knowledge.  So the
English nation entrusts the welfare of its fleet and naval defences to a
First Lord of the Admiralty, who, not being a sailor can know nothing
about these matters except by acts of faith.  There can be no doubt about
faith and not reason being the _ultima ratio_.

Even Euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the charge of
credulity as any writer who ever lived, cannot get beyond this.  He has
no demonstrable first premise.  He requires postulates and axioms which
transcend demonstration, and without which he can do nothing.  His
superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his ground is faith.  Nor
again can he get further than telling a man he is a fool if he persists
in differing from him.  He says "which is absurd," and declines to
discuss the matter further.  Faith and authority, therefore, prove to be
as necessary for him as for anyone else.  "By faith in what, then," asked
Ernest of himself, "shall a just man endeavour to live at this present
time?"  He answered to himself, "At any rate not by faith in the
supernatural element of the Christian religion."

And how should he best persuade his fellow-countrymen to leave off
believing in this supernatural element?  Looking at the matter from a
practical point of view he thought the Archbishop of Canterbury afforded
the most promising key to the situation.  It lay between him and the
Pope.  The Pope was perhaps best in theory, but in practice the
Archbishop of Canterbury would do sufficiently well.  If he could only
manage to sprinkle a pinch of salt, as it were, on the Archbishop's tail,
he might convert the whole Church of England to free thought by a _coup
de main_.  There must be an amount of cogency which even an Archbishop--an
Archbishop whose perceptions had never been quickened by imprisonment for
assault--would not be able to withstand.  When brought face to face with
the facts, as he, Ernest, could arrange them; his Grace would have no
resource but to admit them; being an honourable man he would at once
resign his Archbishopric, and Christianity would become extinct in
England within a few months' time.  This, at any rate, was how things
ought to be.  But all the time Ernest had no confidence in the
Archbishop's not hopping off just as the pinch was about to fall on him,
and this seemed so unfair that his blood boiled at the thought of it.  If
this was to be so, he must try if he could not fix him by the judicious
use of bird-lime or a snare, or throw the salt on his tail from an
ambuscade.

To do him justice it was not himself that he greatly cared about.  He
knew he had been humbugged, and he knew also that the greater part of the
ills which had afflicted him were due, indirectly, in chief measure to
the influence of Christian teaching; still, if the mischief had ended
with himself, he should have thought little about it, but there was his
sister, and his brother Joey, and the hundreds and thousands of young
people throughout England whose lives were being blighted through the
lies told them by people whose business it was to know better, but who
scamped their work and shirked difficulties instead of facing them.  It
was this which made him think it worth while to be angry, and to consider
whether he could not at least do something towards saving others from
such years of waste and misery as he had had to pass himself.  If there
was no truth in the miraculous accounts of Christ's Death and
Resurrection, the whole of the religion founded upon the historic truth
of those events tumbled to the ground.  "My," he exclaimed, with all the
arrogance of youth, "they put a gipsy or fortune-teller into prison for
getting money out of silly people who think they have supernatural power;
why should they not put a clergyman in prison for pretending that he can
absolve sins, or turn bread and wine into the flesh and blood of One who
died two thousand years ago?  What," he asked himself, "could be more
pure 'hanky-panky' than that a bishop should lay his hands upon a young
man and pretend to convey to him the spiritual power to work this
miracle?  It was all very well to talk about toleration; toleration, like
everything else, had its limits; besides, if it was to include the bishop
let it include the fortune-teller too."  He would explain all this to the
Archbishop of Canterbury by and by, but as he could not get hold of him
just now, it occurred to him that he might experimentalise advantageously
upon the viler soul of the prison chaplain.  It was only those who took
the first and most obvious step in their power who ever did great things
in the end, so one day, when Mr Hughes--for this was the chaplain's
name--was talking with him, Ernest introduced the question of Christian
evidences, and tried to raise a discussion upon them.  Mr Hughes had been
very kind to him, but he was more than twice my hero's age, and had long
taken the measure of such objections as Ernest tried to put before him.  I
do not suppose he believed in the actual objective truth of the stories
about Christ's Resurrection and Ascension any more than Ernest did, but
he knew that this was a small matter, and that the real issue lay much
deeper than this.

Mr Hughes was a man who had been in authority for many years, and he
brushed Ernest on one side as if he had been a fly.  He did it so well
that my hero never ventured to tackle him again, and confined his
conversation with him for the future to such matters as what he had
better do when he got out of prison; and here Mr Hughes was ever ready to
listen to him with sympathy and kindness.

 Upon hearing of Ernest's arrest, both Towneley and Overton rush to his assistance, but neither one is able to save him from being held overnight in jail or from the embarrassment of having his name mentioned in one of the journals. Before pronouncing sentence of six months of hard labor at Coldbath Fields Prison, the judge hearing the case reprimands Ernest for having betrayed his genteel upbringing. "At Cambridge," the judge intones, "you were shielded from impurity by every obstacle which virtuous and vigilant authorities could devise . . . but it seems as though their only result had been this -- that you have not even the common sense to be able to distinguish between a respectable girl and a prostitute." Even before reaching prison, Ernest collapses with an incipient attack of brain fever which leaves him bedfast for nearly two months in the prison infirmary. During his slow recovery, Ernest realizes his mistake of becoming a clergyman and convinces himself that the underlying principle of Christianity, the evidence for the Resurrection, is false. Once satisfying himself on this point, he embraces rationalism and determines to undo all the wrong done to himself and others from Christian teaching: He will try to persuade the Archbishop of Canterbury to publicly renounce Christianity as a monstrous hoax. In the meantime, however, Theobald has already renounced Ernest as his son. Overton, who assumed the burden of bearing the bad news of Ernest's misfortune to Theobald, is pleased by this development, for he is certain that Ernest's chances for straightening himself out are much better without further parental interference.

