its value to us the clergy, but for the laity it
is a stumbling-block which cannot be taken out of their way too soon or too
completely. Of course, I mean, on the supposition that they read it, which
happily they seldom do. If people read the Bible as the ordinary British
churchman or churchwoman reads it, it is harmless enough; but if they read it
with any care - which we should assume they will if we give it them at all - it
is fatal to them.«
    »What do you mean?« said Ernest, more and more astonished, but more and more
feeling that he was at least in the hands of a man who had definite ideas.
    »Your question shows me that you have never read your Bible. A more
unreliable book was never put upon paper; take my advice, and don't read it, not
till you are a few years older, and may do so safely.«
    »But surely you believe the Bible when it tells you of such things as that
Christ died [and] rose from the dead? Surely you believe this?« said Ernest -
quite prepared to be told that Pryer believed nothing of the kind.
    »I do not believe it, I know it.«
    »But how - if the testimony of the Bible fails?«
    »On that of the living voice of the church, which I know to be infallible,
and to be informed of Christ himself.«
 

                                   Chapter 53

The foregoing conversation and others like it made a deep impression upon my
hero. If next day he had taken a walk with Mr. Hawke, and heard what he had to
say on the other side, he would have been just as much struck, and as ready to
fling off what Pryer had told him as he now was to throw aside all he had ever
heard from anyone except Pryer; but there was no Mr. Hawke to hand, so Pryer had
everything his own way.
    Embryo minds, like embryo bodies, pass through a number of strange
metamorphoses before they adopt their final shape. It is no more to be wondered
at that one who is going to turn out a Roman Catholic should have passed through
the stages of being first a Methodist, and then a free thinker, than that a man
should at some former time have been a mere cell, and later on an invertebrate
animal. Ernest however could not be expected to know this. Embryos never do.
Embryos, as I have said already, think with each stage of their development that
they have now reached the only condition which