 raw material, as in the case
of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk. And now, when this respectability had
lasted undisturbed for nearly thirty years - when all that preceded it had long
lain benumbed in the consciousness - that past had risen and immersed his
thought as if with the terrible irruption of a new sense overburthening the
feeble being.
    Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learned something
momentous, something which entered actively into the struggle of his longings
and terrors. There, he thought, lay an opening towards spiritual, perhaps
towards material rescue.
    The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There may be
coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of
gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose
desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually
explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with
those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself
occasionally in us all, to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe
in the future perfection of our race or in the nearest date fixed for the end of
the world; whether we regard the earth as a putrefying nidus for a saved
remnant, including ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the solidarity of
mankind.
    The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through life the
ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action: it had been the motive
which he had poured out in his prayers. Who would use money and position better
than he meant to use them? Who could surpass him in self-abhorrence and
exaltation of God's cause? And to Mr. Bulstrode God's cause was something
distinct from his own rectitude of conduct: it enforced a discrimination of
God's enemies, who were to be used merely as instruments, and whom it would be
as well if possible to keep out of money and consequent influence. Also,
profitable investments in trades where the power of the prince of this world
showed its most active devices, became sanctified by a right application of the
profits in the hands of God's servant.
    This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical
belief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar to
Englishmen. There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our
morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with
individual fellow-men.
    But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, has necessarily
a conscience or
