whom he consistently deceived, how would they suffer? Martin Warricombe to begin
with. Martin was a man who had lived his life, and whose chief care would now be
to keep his mind at rest in the faiths which had served him from youth onwards.
In that very purpose, Godwin believed he could assist him. To see a young man,
of strong and trained intellect, championing the old beliefs, must doubtless be
a source of reassurance to one in Martin's position. Reassurance derived from a
lie? - And what matter, if the outcome were genuine, if it lasted until the man
himself was no more? Did not every form of content result from illusion? What
was truth without the mind of the believer?
    Society, then - at all events that part of it likely to be affected by his
activity? Suppose him an ordained priest, performing all the functions implied
in that office. Why, to think only of examples recognised by the public at
large, how would he differ for the worse from this, that, and the other
clergyman who taught Christianity, all but with blunt avowal, as a scheme of
human ethics? No wolf in sheep's clothing he! He plotted against no man's
pocket, no woman's honour; he had no sinister design of sapping the faith of
congregations - a scheme, by-the-bye, which fanatic liberators might undertake
with vast self-approval. If by a word he could have banished religious dogma
from the minds of the multitude, he would not have cared to utter it. Wherein
lay, indeed, a scruple to be surmounted. The Christian priest must be a man of
humble temper; he must be willing, even eager, to sit down among the poor in
spirit as well as in estate, and impart to them his unworldly solaces. Yes, but
it had always been recognised that some men who could do the Church good service
were personally unfitted for those meek ministrations. His place was in the
hierarchy of intellect; if he were to be active at all, it must be with the
brain. In his conversation with Buckland Warricombe, last October, he had spoken
not altogether insincerely. Let him once be a member of the Church militant, and
his heart would go with many a stroke against that democratic movement which
desired, among other things, the Church's abolition. He had power of utterance.
Roused to combat by the proletarian challenge, he could make his voice ring in
the ears of men, even though he used a symbolism which he would not by choice