"That is where Your Eminency and all the aboriginals err. Your opinion is formed upon the apprehensive sentimentality of pious old-ladies-of-both-sexes whose ideal of Right is the Not-obviously Wrong. When a thing is unpleasant, they go up a turning: wipe their mouths; and mistake evasion for annihilation. They don't annihilate the evil: they avoid it. Now, we are here to seek and to save that which was lost: and our churches must be more free to the lost than to the saved--if any be saved. Experience proves that your pious fears have no sure warranty. Wesleyan schismatics have performed Watch-night services for more than a century. Anglican schismatics have done the same: and, in later years, they have celebrated their mysteries at midnight on Christmas Eve. We Ourself have assisted at these functions. The temples were open and free: and We never saw or heard a sign of the profanation of which you speak. Sots and harlots undoubtedly were present: but they were not disorderly: they were cowed, they were sleepy, they were curious, but they made no noise. Even though they had shouted, it only would have been in protest against some human ordinance; and a human ordinance must give way the moment it becomes a barrier between one soul and that soul's Creator. Supposing means of grace to be obtainable in a church, who durst deny them to those who chiefly need them? The position which you clergy take up is an essentially false one. We are not here to establish conventions, or to enforce conformity. We are here to serve--only to serve. We especially disapprove of any system which bars access to the church, or which makes it difficult;--this admission-fee, for example." "Holy Father, the clergy must live." "You lead Us to infer that they cannot live without these sixpences?" "We are so poor: we have no endowments: the fee is no more than a pew-rent for a single service----" "Lord Cardinal, be accurate. You have endowments: not equal to those of which you are thinking, the 'stolen property' enjoyed by the Church-of-England-as-by-Law-Established: but you have endowments. You mean that they are meagre. But pew-rents are abominable: so are pews, for that matter. Abolish them both." "I am bound to obey Your Holiness: but I must say that this quixotic impossible idealism will be the ruin of the Church----" "That is impossible: because Her Founder promised to be with Her always even unto the end of the world." "God helps those who help themselves----" "But not those who help themselves out of other people's pockets." "The workman is worthy of his hire----"