‘Then you’re an infidel, Osborne.’ ‘Perhaps. Do you think that so very horrible?’ ‘Yes, I do. Tom Paine, and all the rest of them, you know!’ ‘Well, Home, I’ll tell you one thing I think worse than being an infidel.’ ‘What is that?’ ‘Taking to the Church for a living.’ ‘I don’t see that.’ ‘Either the so-called truths it advocates are things to live and die for, or they are the veriest old wives’ fables going. Do you know who was the first to do what you are about now?’ ‘No. I can’t say. I’m not up in Church history yet.’ ‘It was Judas.’ I am not sure that Charley was right, but that is what he said. I was taking no part in the conversation, but listening eagerly, with a strong suspicion that Charley had been leading Home to this very point. ‘A man must live,’ said Home. ‘That’s precisely what I take it Judas said: for my part I don’t see it.’ ‘Don’t see what?’ ‘That a man must live. It would be a far more incontrovertible assertion that a man must die--and a more comfortable one, too.’ ‘Upon my word, I don’t understand you, Osborne! You make a fellow feel deuced queer with your remarks.’ ‘At all events, you will allow that the first of them--they call them apostles, don’t they?--didn’t take to preaching the gospel for the sake of a living. What a satire on the whole kit of them that word _living_, so constantly in all their mouths, is! It seems to me that Messrs Peter and Paul and Matthew, and all the rest of them, forsook their livings for a good chance of something rather the contrary.’ ‘Then it _was_ true--what they said about you at Forest’s?’ ‘I don’t know what they said,’ returned Charley; ‘but before I would pretend to believe what I didn’t--’ ‘But I _do_ believe it, Osborne.’ ‘May I ask on what grounds?’ ‘Why--everybody does.’ ‘That would be no reason, even if it were a fact, which it is not. You believe it, or rather, choose to think you believe it, because you’ve been told it. Sooner than pretend to teach what I have never learned, and be looked up to as a pattern of godliness, I would ‘list in the ranks. There, at least, a man might earn an honest living.’ ‘By Jove! You do make a fellow feel uncomfortable!’ repeated Home. ‘You’ve got such a--such an uncompromising way of saying things--to use a mild expression.’ ‘I think it’s a sneaking thing to do, and unworthy of a gentleman.’ ‘I don’t see what right you’ve got to bully me in that way,’ said Home, getting angry. It was time to interfere. ‘Charley is so afraid of being dishonest, Home,’ I said, ‘that he is rude.--You are rude now, Charley.’ ‘I beg your pardon, Home,’ exclaimed Charley at once. ‘Oh, never mind!’ returned Home with gloomy good-nature. ‘You ought to make allowance, Charley,’ I pursued. ‘When a man has been accustomed all his life to hear things spoken of in a certain way, he cannot help having certain notions to start with.’ ‘If I thought as Osborne does,’ said Home, ‘I _would_ sooner ‘list than go into the Church.’