“Largely, but not entirely. You see, your present status is official. You owe your posts directly or indirectly to the Crown. You are part of the machinery of the State. And it is surprising how mere officialism and the possession of authorised and acknowledged titles impress the popular imagination in this country. You see it all through. Dub a man M.A. or LL.D., and the general man will persist in thinking him a better scholar than another who far surpasses him, but has not received the hall-mark of a University. So put a man in uniform with epaulettes and dub him an officer. He bears a social cachet, though he may be a poltroon and a blackguard. It is largely an affair of clothes and names and State-connection. You clergymen, if you really care about retaining your social importance, would commit social suicide if you got yourselves disestablished, even if you retain those endowments and other fleshpots you are so concerned about, but which appear to me the element you could most easily compensate under a system of voluntaryism.” “Then you think, Mr. Beaumont,” asked the Rector of Fillingham, “our policy is to let well alone?” “Yes, if you’re let. I think if I were an incumbent with a fat living I could swallow my bishop and make no bones about it. Remember the dissenting parsons have their deacons, and I can conceive of nothing more galling than for a man of principle and education to have to trim his sails to suit the views of a coarse, uneducated deacon with all the soul of a village tyrant, just because he happens to have more money than some of the humbler worshippers. I should preach either him or myself out of the conventicle.” “Ah! he would be your bishop,” laughed the Archdeacon. “Those dissenters are just the plague of my life,” confided one of the country vicars from a neighbouring parish. “Just fancy, Mr. Beaumont, there aren’t five hundred families in all my parish, and yet there is besides mother church, a Wesleyan chapel, a Congregational and a Baptist. It turns my modest glass of wine and my crust to gall and ashes when I think of it.” “Oh! I know something of the feeling, Vicar. You don’t suppose I like to see people taking their cases to the man next door, who, I am persuaded is not half so fine a fellow as I am. But you can’t go begging for communicants, any more than I can go touting for clients. Besides, what does it matter in which church a man saves his soul alive, so long as it is saved. _Ut palata, sic judicia_ is of universal application.” “Ah! but can a man be saved outside the true Church?” asked the young curate from the Bishop’s Hostel.