"And what is life but hypocrisy?--your very clothes make you a hypocrite: without them you would resemble a forked radish, but you disfigure yourself in surtout and pantaloons. Go through the ceremonies, sir--the feeling in time will come; dig your trenches deep, and the rain will pour into them and burn the sacrifice of your altar with fire; kneel when you have no devotion, bend yourself to decrees and ordinances when you have no humility and no faith; and, entering on that course with the scoff of Voltaire, you will emerge from it with the sanctity of Vincent de Paul." "On the contrary, sir, I maintain," said I, "that, if you persist in these miserable bonds of an outward obedience, in the expectation that they will promote your advance in goodness, you bring on yourself the condemnation of the Pharisee; you may enter them with the faith of your friend Mr Swallowlies, but you will leave them ere long with the sentiments of the infidel and apostate Strauss." "I call no man an apostate," cried Mr Rowdy, "who traces the operations of his own mind to their legitimate results; I call no man an infidel who believes that he was born, and that he shall die." "How good! how liberal! how humane!" exclaimed a chorus of sweet voices. "And what do YOU say?" I enquired, addressing our new curate. "For myself," said Mr Mount Huxtable, "I think it sinful in any one to decide on such a subject, unless in the exact words of the church." "Very good," said the Doctor; "judiciously answered." "Don't you allow private judgment, sir?" said I. "No more, sir," he replied, "than I should allow private execution. It is for the church to pass sentence: if any presumptuous individual interferes with her authority, he is as much out of his sphere as if he were to displace Baron Alderson on the bench, go through the mockery of a trial, and condemn an enemy of his own to be hanged." "Very good, indeed," said the Doctor; "judiciously answered." "I have often heard your friend, Charles Fustian, say the same," said Araminta. "Is he a friend of yours, Mount Huxtable?" inquired Dr Smiler, in a very bland tone. "A most intimate friend, my dear sir," replied Mount Huxtable. "Dear me!--I thought you told me you didn't know him." "No, my dear sir, I didn't tell you so: I only gave you to understand that we weren't acquainted." "That used to be pretty much the same thing," I said, a little chafed with the putting down I had already experienced, "and I suspect you are a great deal more intimate than you were inclined to let us know." "You have exactly hit upon the reason," he replied. "I was not inclined to let you know; and I have yet to learn that a priest is imperatively required to confess to a layman, however inquisitive or ill-mannered he may be." "Come, my dear Buddle," said the Doctor, "I think you will see that you ought to apologise." "For what?" I exclaimed.