'I think it both dangerous and offensive. Not a few clergymen nowadays, who imagine themselves free from the letter and wholly devoted to spirit, are doing their best in the cause of materialism. They surrender the very points at issue between religion and worldliness. They are so blinded by a vague humanitarian impulse as to make the New Testament an oracle of popular Radicalism.' Sidwell looked up. 'I never quite understood, Mr. Peak, how you regard Radicalism. You think it opposed to all true progress?' 'Utterly, as concerns any reasonable limit of time.' 'Buckland, as you know, maintains that spiritual progress is only possible by this way.' 'I can't venture to contradict him,' said Godwin; 'for it may be that advance is destined only to come after long retrogression and anarchy. Perhaps the way _does_ lie through such miseries. But we can't foresee that with certainty, and those of us who hate the present tendency of things must needs assert their hatred as strongly as possible, seeing that we _may_ have a more hopeful part to play than seems likely.' 'I like that view,' replied Sidwell, in an undertone. 'My belief,' pursued Godwin, with an earnestness very agreeable to himself, for he had reached the subject on which he could speak honestly, 'is that an instructed man can only hold views such as your brother's--hopeful views of the immediate future--if he has never been brought into close contact with the lower classes. Buckland doesn't know the people for whom he pleads.' 'You think them so degraded?' 'It is impossible, without seeming inhumanly scornful, to give a just account of their ignorance and baseness. The two things, speaking generally, go together. Of the ignorant, there are very few indeed who can think purely or aspiringly. You, of course, object the teaching of Christianity; but the lowly and the humble of whom it speaks scarcely exist, scarcely can exist, in our day and country. A ludicrous pretence of education is banishing every form of native simplicity. In the large towns, the populace sink deeper and deeper into a vicious vulgarity, and every rural district is being affected by the spread of contagion. To flatter the proletariat is to fight against all the good that still characterises educated England--against reverence for the beautiful, against magnanimity, against enthusiasm of mind, heart, and soul.' He quivered with vehemence of feeling, and the flush which rose to his hearer's cheek, the swimming brightness of her eye, proved that a strong sympathy stirred within her. 'I know nothing of the uneducated in towns,' she said, 'but the little I have seen of them in country places certainly supports your opinion. I could point to two or three families who have suffered distinct degradation owing to what most people call an improvement in their circumstances. Father often speaks of such instances, comparing the state of things now with what he can remember.'