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_ Before going down into the kitchen to convert the tinker Ernest ran
hurriedly over his analysis of Paley's evidences, and put into his
pocket a copy of Archbishop Whateley's "Historic Doubts." Then he
descended the dark rotten old stairs and knocked at the tinker's
door. Mr Shaw was very civil; he said he was rather throng just
now, but if Ernest did not mind the sound of hammering he should be
very glad of a talk with him. Our hero, assenting to this, ere long
led the conversation to Whateley's "Historic Doubts"--a work which,
as the reader may know, pretends to show that there never was any
such person as Napoleon Buonaparte, and thus satirises the arguments
of those who have attacked the Christian miracles.
Mr Shaw said he knew "Historic Doubts" very well.
"And what you think of it?" said Ernest, who regarded the pamphlet
as a masterpiece of wit and cogency.
"If you really want to know," said Mr Shaw, with a sly twinkle, "I
think that he who was so willing and able to prove that what was was
not, would be equally able and willing to make a case for thinking
that what was not was, if it suited his purpose." Ernest was very
much taken aback. How was it that all the clever people of
Cambridge had never put him up to this simple rejoinder? The answer
is easy: they did not develop it for the same reason that a hen had
never developed webbed feet--that is to say, because they did not
want to do so; but this was before the days of Evolution, and Ernest
could not as yet know anything of the great principle that underlies
it.
"You see," continued Mr Shaw, "these writers all get their living by
writing in a certain way, and the more they write in that way, the
more they are likely to get on. You should not call them dishonest
for this any more than a judge should call a barrister dishonest for
earning his living by defending one in whose innocence he does not
seriously believe; but you should hear the barrister on the other
side before you decide upon the case."
This was another facer. Ernest could only stammer that he had
endeavoured to examine these questions as carefully as he could.
"You think you have," said Mr Shaw; "you Oxford and Cambridge
gentlemen think you have examined everything. I have examined very
little myself except the bottoms of old kettles and saucepans, but
if you will answer me a few questions, I will tell you whether or no
you have examined much more than I have."
Ernest expressed his readiness to be questioned.
"Then," said the tinker, "give me the story of the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ as told in St John's gospel."
I am sorry to say that Ernest mixed up the four accounts in a
deplorable manner; he even made the angel come down and roll away
the stone and sit upon it. He was covered with confusion when the
tinker first told him without the book of some of his many
inaccuracies, and then verified his criticisms by referring to the
New Testament itself.
"Now," said Mr Shaw good naturedly, "I am an old man and you are a
young one, so perhaps you'll not mind my giving you a piece of
advice. I like you, for I believe you mean well, but you've been
real bad brought up, and I don't think you have ever had so much as
a chance yet. You know nothing of our side of the question, and I
have just shown you that you do not know much more of your own, but
I think you will make a kind of Carlyle sort of a man some day. Now
go upstairs and read the accounts of the Resurrection correctly
without mixing them up, and have a clear idea of what it is that
each writer tells us, then if you feel inclined to pay me another
visit I shall be glad to see you, for I shall know you have made a
good beginning and mean business. Till then, Sir, I must wish you a
very good morning."
Ernest retreated abashed. An hour sufficed him to perform the task
enjoined upon him by Mr Shaw; and at the end of that hour the "No,
no, no," which still sounded in his ears as he heard it from
Towneley, came ringing up more loudly still from the very pages of
the Bible itself, and in respect of the most important of all the
events which are recorded in it. Surely Ernest's first day's
attempt at more promiscuous visiting, and at carrying out his
principles more thoroughly, had not been unfruitful. But he must go
and have a talk with Pryer. He therefore got his lunch and went to
Pryer's lodgings. Pryer not being at home, he lounged to the
British Museum Reading Room, then recently opened, sent for the
"Vestiges of Creation," which he had never yet seen, and spent the
rest of the afternoon in reading it.
Ernest did not see Pryer on the day of his conversation with Mr
Shaw, but he did so next morning and found him in a good temper,
which of late he had rarely been. Sometimes, indeed, he had behaved
to Ernest in a way which did not bode well for the harmony with
which the College of Spiritual Pathology would work when it had once
been founded. It almost seemed as though he were trying to get a
complete moral ascendency over him, so as to make him a creature of
his own.
He did not think it possible that he could go too far, and indeed,
when I reflect upon my hero's folly and inexperience, there is much
to be said in excuse for the conclusion which Pryer came to.
As a matter of fact, however, it was not so. Ernest's faith in
Pryer had been too great to be shaken down all in a moment, but it
had been weakened lately more than once. Ernest had fought hard
against allowing himself to see this, nevertheless any third person
who knew the pair would have been able to see that the connection
between the two might end at any moment, for when the time for one
of Ernest's snipe-like changes of flight came, he was quick in
making it; the time, however, was not yet come, and the intimacy
between the two was apparently all that it had ever been. It was
only that horrid money business (so said Ernest to himself) that
caused any unpleasantness between them, and no doubt Pryer was
right, and he, Ernest, much too nervous. However, that might stand
over for the present.
In like manner, though he had received a shock by reason of his
conversation with Mr Shaw, and by looking at the "Vestiges," he was
as yet too much stunned to realise the change which was coming over
him. In each case the momentum of old habits carried him forward in
the old direction. He therefore called on Pryer, and spent an hour
and more with him.
He did not say that he had been visiting among his neighbours; this
to Pryer would have been like a red rag to a bull. He only talked
in much his usual vein about the proposed College, the lamentable
want of interest in spiritual things which was characteristic of
modern society, and other kindred matters; he concluded by saying
that for the present he feared Pryer was indeed right, and that
nothing could be done.
"As regards the laity," said Pryer, "nothing; not until we have a
discipline which we can enforce with pains and penalties. How can a
sheep dog work a flock of sheep unless he can bite occasionally as
well as bark? But as regards ourselves we can do much."
Pryer's manner was strange throughout the conversation, as though he
were thinking all the time of something else. His eyes wandered
curiously over Ernest, as Ernest had often noticed them wander
before: the words were about Church discipline, but somehow or
other the discipline part of the story had a knack of dropping out
after having been again and again emphatically declared to apply to
the laity and not to the clergy: once indeed Pryer had pettishly
exclaimed: "Oh, bother the College of Spiritual Pathology." As
regards the clergy, glimpses of a pretty large cloven hoof kept
peeping out from under the saintly robe of Pryer's conversation, to
the effect, that so long as they were theoretically perfect,
practical peccadilloes--or even peccadaccios, if there is such a
word, were of less importance. He was restless, as though wanting
to approach a subject which he did not quite venture to touch upon,
and kept harping (he did this about every third day) on the wretched
lack of definition concerning the limits of vice and virtue, and the
way in which half the vices wanted regulating rather than
prohibiting. He dwelt also on the advantages of complete unreserve,
and hinted that there were mysteries into which Ernest had not yet
been initiated, but which would enlighten him when he got to know
them, as he would be allowed to do when his friends saw that he was
strong enough.
Pryer had often been like this before, but never so nearly, as it
seemed to Ernest, coming to a point--though what the point was he
could not fully understand. His inquietude was communicating itself
to Ernest, who would probably ere long have come to know as much as
Pryer could tell him, but the conversation was abruptly interrupted
by the appearance of a visitor. We shall never know how it would
have ended, for this was the very last time that Ernest ever saw
Pryer. Perhaps Pryer was going to break to him some bad news about
his speculations. _
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