Such was the doctrine preached from a thousand pulpits, at any rate, not many years since. And thus it was that the churches were chiefly filled with ignorant women and old men, or with young people—who died early of consumption—who accepted everything they heard in the pulpit, who knew nothing of the world they denounced, to whom the language of passion and temptation was unknown. It is easy to be religious when all that is irreligious has worked itself out of the man—to lead a dull, decent, formal life, when the capacity for excess is gone, or the spendthrift has been turned into a miser; when old age has taken from woman her power to tempt, and robbed the wine-cup of its fascination; when all a man wants is an easy-chair by a good fire. When we cry with Tennyson: ‘Ruined trunks on withered forks, Empty scarecrows, I and you.’ But it is not everyone who cares for such companionship. ‘Where are my dead forefathers?’ asked the pagan Frisian of Bishop Wolfran, as he stood with one of his royal leg’s in the baptismal font. ‘In hell with all the other unbelievers,’ was the reply. ‘Mighty well!’ exclaimed Radbrod, removing his leg. ‘Then I will rather feast with my ancestors in the halls of Woden, than dwell with your little starveling band of Christians in heaven.’ To return to Wentworth. He was disappointed, not only as regards the ministry, but as regards love, and that is a yet more awful thing. Plotinus taught that God made women beautiful that by means of them men might be drawn to love a beauty that is divine. To one capable of strong affection no blow can be more terrible than that of a disappointed love. It is vain to doubt on the subject. To all human appearances Wentworth was lost, but God never leaves a man to fall away for ever. ‘A gracious hand,’ writes the pious Wilberforce, ‘leads us in ways we know not, not only with, but against our plans and inclinations.’ Happily, this was so in Wentworth’s case. There came to him strength to reform, to conquer himself, to rise out of his dead self to something higher and better, partly from the memory of a pious home, partly by the natural working of his soul, partly by the needs of daily life, partly and chiefly by contact with an actress, who reproached him with his idleness and want of energy and aimlessness. Both were Bohemians, but the woman supported herself and her widowed mother. Both had loved and lost, both had found the ways of transgressors hard, that pleasure is not happiness, that there is no way to escape from God’s universal law, that wrongdoing, in thought or word or deed, is never without its inseparable penalty, and that is, the worm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched. You may forget much, but you can never forget, if you live till the age of Methuselah, what you have done inconsistent with the native nobility of man; if you have brought dishonour on your name, betrayed the right,