"That if you knew his name, it would interest you to hear that he was
born in this inn. His parents kept it."
"And he chose to be a field-preacher!" cried I. "Why, that was coming
down in the world, was it not?" [Note 1.]
"It was coming down, in this world," said he. "But there is another
world, Cary, and I fancy it was going up in that. You must remember,
however, that he did not choose to be a field-preacher nor a Dissenter:
he was turned out of the Church."
"But why should he have been turned out?"
"I expect, because he would not hold his tongue."
"But why did anybody want him to hold his tongue?"
"Well, you see, he let it run to awkward subjects. Ladies and gentlemen
did not like him because he set his face against fashionable diversions,
and told them that they were miserable sinners, and that there was only
one way into Heaven, which they would have to take as well as the poor
in the almshouses. The neighbouring clergy did not like him because he
was better than themselves. And the bishops did not like him because he
said they ought to do their duty better, and look after their dioceses,
instead of setting bad examples to their clergy by hunting and
card-playing and so forth; or, at the best, sitting quiet in their
closets to write learned books, which was not the duty they promised
when they were ordained. But, as was the case with another Preacher,
`the common people heard him gladly.'"
"And he was really turned out?"
"Seven years ago."
"I wonder if it were a wise thing," said I, thinking.
"Mr Raymond says it was the most unwise thing they could have done.
And he says so of the turning forth under the Act of Uniformity, eighty
years ago. He thinks the men who were the very salt of the Church left
her then: and that now she is a saltless, soulless thing, that will die
unless God's mercy put more salt in her."
"But suppose it do, and the bishops get them turned out again?"
"Then, says Raymond, let the bishops look to themselves. There is such
a thing as judicial blindness: and there is such a thing as salt that
has lost its savour, and is trodden under foot of men. If the Church
cast out the children of God, God may cast out the Church of England.
There are precedents for it in the Books of Heaven. And in all those
cases, God let them go on for a while: over and over again they grieved
His Spirit and persecuted His servants; but at last there always came
one time which was the last time, and after that the Spirit withdrew,
and that Church, or that nation, was left to the lot which it had
chosen."
"Oh, Ephraim, that sounds dreadful."
"It will be dreadful," he answered, "if we provoke it at the Lord's
hand."
"One feels as if one would like to save such men," I said.
"Do you? I feel as if I should like to save such Churches. It is like
a son's feeling who sees his own mother going down to the pit of
destruction, and is utterly powerless to hold out a hand to save her.
She will not be saved. And I wonder, sometimes, whether any much sorer
anguish can be on this side Heaven!"