a low churchman, but we
should not be above learning from any one, and surely he could affect his
hearers as powerfully as Mr. Hawke had affected himself if he had only the
courage to set to work. The people whom he saw preaching in the squares
sometimes drew large audiences; he could at any rate preach better than they.
    Ernest broached this to Pryer, who treated it as something too outrageous to
be even thought of. Nothing, he said, could more tend to lower the dignity of
the clergy, and bring the church into contempt. His manner was brusque, and even
rude.
    Ernest ventured a little mild dissent. Granted it was not usually done, but
something at any rate must be done, and that quickly. This was how Wesley and
Whitfield had begun that great movement which had kindled religious life in the
minds of hundreds of thousands. This was no time to be standing on dignity. It
was just because Wesley and Whitfield had done what the church would not that
they had won men to follow them whom the church had now lost.
    Pryer eyed Ernest searchingly and after a pause said, »I don't know what to
make of you Pontifex - you are at once so very right and so very wrong. I agree
with you heartily that something should be done, but it must not be done in a
way which experience has shown leads to nothing but fanaticism and dissent. Do
you approve of these Wesleyans? Do you hold your ordination vows so cheaply as
to think that it does not matter whether the services of the church are
performed in her churches, and with all due ceremony or not? If you do - then,
frankly, you had no business to be ordained; if you do not, then remember that
one of the first duties of a young deacon is obedience to authority. Neither the
Catholic Church, nor yet the Church of England allows her clergy to preach in
the streets of cities when there is no lack of churches.«
    Ernest felt the force of this and Pryer saw that he wavered.
    »We are living,« he continued more genially, »in an age of transition, and
in a country which though it has gained much by the Reformation does not
perceive how much it has also lost. You cannot and must not hawk Christ about in
the streets as though you were in a heathen country whose inhabitants had never
heard of him. The people here in London have had ample warning. Every church
they pass is a protest to them against their lives, and a call to them to
repent. Every church bell