If one could stay, if one could only have a choice in the matter, if one could really believe that the old shore is best, who would leave it? Who would not wish to be secure if he knew where security lay? But this new teacher, who has come among us with his ill-defined doctrines and his subrisive smile,--he and they who have taught him,--have made it impossible for us to stay. With hands outstretched towards the old places, with sorrowing hearts,--with hearts which still love the old teachings which the mind will no longer accept,--we, too, cut our ropes, and go out in our little boats, and search for a land that will be new to us, though how far new,--new in how many things, we do not know. Who would not stay behind if it were possible to him? But our business at present is with the teacher, and not with the taught. Of him we may declare that he is, almost always, a true man,--true in spite of that subrisive smile and ill-defined doctrine. He is one who, without believing, cannot bring himself to think that he believes, or to say that he believes that which he disbelieves without grievous suffering to himself. He has to say it, and does suffer. There are the formulas which must be repeated, or he must abandon his ministry altogether,--his ministry, and his adopted work, and the public utility which it is his ambition to achieve. Debonair though he be, and smile though he may, he has through it all some terrible heart-struggles, in which he is often tempted to give way and to acknowledge that he is too weak for the work he has taken in hand. When he resolved that he must give that five pounds to the Colenso fund,--or rather when he resolved that he must have his name printed in the public list, for an anonymous giving of his money would have been nothing,--he knew that his rope was indeed cut, and that his boat was in truth upon the wide waters. After that it will serve him little to say that such an act on his part implies no agreement with the teaching of the African bishop. He had, by the subscription, attached himself to the Broad Church with the newest broad principles, and must expect henceforth to be regarded as little better than an infidel,--certainly as an enemy in the camp,--by the majority of his brethren of the day. “Why does he not give up his tithes? Why does he stick to his temporalities?” says the old-fashioned, wrathful parson of the neighbouring parish; and the sneer, which is repeated from day to day and from month to month, is not slow to reach the new man’s ear. It is an accusation hard to be borne; but it has to be borne,--among other things,--by the clergyman who subscribes for Colenso. THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Clergymen of the Church of England, by Anthony Trollope