 Simeonites held themselves to have received a very loud
call to the ministry, and were ready to pinch themselves for years so as to
prepare for it by the necessary theological courses. To most of them the
becoming clergymen would be the entrée into a social position from which they
were at present kept out by barriers which they well knew to be impassable;
ordination, therefore, opened fields for ambition which made it the central
point in their thoughts, rather than as with Ernest, something which he supposed
would have to be done some day, but about which, as about dying, he trusted that
he need not yet concern himself.
    By way of preparing themselves more completely they would have meetings in
one another's rooms for tea and prayer, and other spiritual exercises. Placing
themselves under the guidance of a few well-known tutors they would teach in
Sunday schools, and be instant, in season and out of season, in imparting
spiritual instruction to all whom they could persuade to listen to them.
    But the soil of the more prosperous undergraduates was not suitable for the
seed they tried to sow. The small pieties with which they larded their
discourse, if chance threw them into the company of one whom they considered
worldly, caused nothing but aversion in the minds of those for whom they were
intended. When they distributed tracts - dropping them by night into good men's
letter boxes when they were asleep - their tracts got burnt, or met with even
worse contumely; they were themselves also treated with the ridicule which they
reflected proudly had been the lot of true followers of Christ in all ages.
Often at their prayer meetings was the passage of St. Paul's referred to in
which he bids his Corinthian converts note concerning themselves that they were
for the most part neither well-bred nor intellectual people. They reflected with
pride that they too had nothing to be proud of in these respects, and, like St.
Paul, gloried in the fact that in the flesh they had not much to glory.
    Ernest had several Johnian friends, and came thus to hear about the
Simeonites and to see some of them, who were pointed out to him as they passed
through the courts. They had a repellent attraction for him; he disliked them
but he could not bring himself to leave them alone. On one occasion he had gone
so far as to parody one of the tracts they had sent round in the night, and to
get a copy dropped into each of the leading Simeonites' boxes. The subject he
had taken was Personal Cleanliness. Cleanliness, he said, was next to
