Or
would not Leighton be better? Or a more modern writer--say Neander,
or Coleridge, or perhaps Dr. Liddon? There were thousands able to
fit him out for the silencing of such foolish men as this Bascombe
of the shirt-front!
Wingfold found himself filled with contempt, but the next moment
was not sure whether this Bascombe or one Wingfold were the more
legitimate object of it. One thing was undeniable--his friends HAD
put him into the priest's office, and he had yielded to go, that he
might eat a piece of bread. He had no love for it except by fits,
when the beauty of an anthem, or the composition of a collect, awoke
in him a faint consenting admiration, or a weak, responsive
sympathy. Did he not, indeed, sometimes despise himself, and that
pretty heartily, for earning his bread by work which any pious old
woman could do better than he? True, he attended to his duties; not
merely "did church," but his endeavour also that all things should
be done decently and in order. All the same it remained a fact that
if Barrister Bascombe were to stand up and assert in full
congregation--as no doubt he was perfectly prepared to do--that
there was no God anywhere in the universe, the Rev.
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