What beautiful material was there in this excellent clergyman! and had he been where his spirit would be understood, or where one knew how to direct him, what might he not become? He found himself in a Church where spirituality and asceticism are exotics, and cannot thrive, notwithstanding that the Scriptures are so emphatic in exhorting us to practise them. Then, if he took them up, he knew not how far to go, or at what point to restrain himself. He had no manuals, no guides; but vague attempts at fulsome piety written for fellow-workmen, who differed with him on the very first principles of faith. He was, therefore, utterly left to his own views and fancies, and what he considered grace and inspiration. He was getting too unworldly for his position, too single-minded, and too earnest for the easy-going clerical gentlemen who formed the bulk of his acquaintances. Not that the majority did not do their duty. To be sure they did; but what was it? To read a sermon from a desk on a Sunday; to pay visits, and read a chapter of the Bible to a dying sinner. The Evangelical counsels, without which, in some degree or other, Christian _perfection_ is unattainable, are exploded anachronisms in the Established of souls, as the outcry against those within its pale, who try to revive them, but too clearly proves. Ecclesiastical virtue, with them, does not differ from secular virtue, any more than the virtue of a Member of Parliament differs from that of a Town Councillor. They are both expected to be gentlemen, and to keep the rules of propriety the public thinks proper to expect from their position. That is all. "Oh!" as poor Father Ignatius used to say, "shall these dry bones live?" Thou knowest, Lord, whether they shall or not; they don't; and in his {125} time they were farther from it than they are now. We must therefore expect, from the nature of the case, what is to follow in the next chapter. He goes perfectly astray, in his pursuit after what the "Church of his baptism" could not give him. It was fortunate that he strayed in the end from a wrong path into the right one, by the way of too far East being West. Easter Sunday in this year he counts the happiest day he spent up to this, though he had only fifty-eight communicants, a decrease since his first Easter. His point of bringing all to the sacrament was not carried. He had even bishops opposing him in this, as in everything else that was not half world, half God.