 his friend desired a return to the
practice of our forefathers.
    »Why, my dear fellow, can you really be ignorant? It is just this, either
the priest is indeed a spiritual guide, as being able to show people how they
ought to live better than they can find out for themselves, or he is nothing at
all - he has no raison d'être. Either the priest is as much a healer and
director of men's souls as a physician is of their bodies, or what is he? The
history of all ages has shown - and surely you must know this as well as I do -
that as men cannot cure the bodies of their patients if they have not been
properly trained in hospitals under skilled teachers, so neither can souls be
cured of their more hidden ailments without the help of men who are skilled in
soul-craft - or in other words, of priests. What do one half of our formularies
and rubrics mean if not this? How in the name of all that is reasonable can we
find out the exact nature of a spiritual malady unless we have had experience of
other similar cases? How can we get this without express training? At present we
have to begin all experiments for ourselves, without profiting by the organised
experience of our predecessors, inasmuch as that experience is never organised
and co-ordinated at all; in the outset, therefore, each one of us must ruin many
souls which could be saved by knowledge of a few elementary principles.«
    Ernest was very much impressed.
    »As for men curing themselves,« continued Pryer, »they can no more cure
their own souls than they can cure their own bodies, or manage their own law
affairs. In these two last cases they see the folly of meddling with their own
cases clearly enough, and recur to a professional adviser as a matter of course;
surely a man's soul is at once a more difficult and intricate matter to treat,
and at the same time it is more important to him that it should be treated
rightly than that either his body or his money should be so. What are we to
think of the practice of a church which encourages people to rely on
unprofessional advice in matters affecting their eternal welfare, when they
would not think of jeopardising their worldly affairs by such insane conduct?«
    Ernest could see no weak place in this. These ideas had crossed his own mind
vaguely before now, but he had never laid hold of them or set them orderly
before himself. Nor was he quick at detecting false analogies and the misuse of
metaphors
