To look at the Rev. Dr. Bulgin; to see him stand there, with his sensual form and swinish face, you would not think that he was the author of one of the most spiritual works in the world, entitled "Our Communion with the Spirit." To _know_ the Rev. Dr. Bulgin,--to know him when, his stage drapery laid aside, he appeared the thing he was,--you could, by no means, imagine that he was the author of an excellent work on "Private Prayer." And yet he was no hypocrite; not, at least, in the common sense of the word. He was an intellectual animal whose utmost hopes were bounded by the horizon of this world. Beyond this world there was NOTHING. He was an Atheist. Not an Atheist publishing a paper advocating Atheistic principles, but an Atheist in the pulpit, professing to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You may shudder at the thought, but the Reverend Doctor Bulgin was such a man. And just such men, in churches of all kinds,--Protestants and Catholics, Orthodox and Heterodox,--have these eighteen hundred years been preaching a clock-work Gospel, leaving unsaid, uncared for, the true Word of the Master--a Word which says, in one breath, temporal and spiritual prayers--a Word which enjoins the establishment of the kingdom of God, _on earth_, in the physical and intellectual welfare of the greatest portion of mankind. Too well these Atheists know that were that Word once boldly uttered, their high pulpits and magnificent livings would vanish like cobwebs before the sweeper's broom. How much evil have such Atheists accomplished in the course of eighteen hundred years? It will do no harm to think upon this subject, just a little. "Herman, my boy, I must tell you of my last adventure," said Bulgin, dropping into the seat which Dermoyne had lately occupied; "it will make your mouth water!" He smacked his lips and clapped his hands; the lips were _oily_, and the hands fat and dumpy. "But, first, you must tell me what's the matter with you? Anything wrong in your church?" "That doesn't trouble me," responded Herman. "True, there is the trial of the Bishop, and the wrangling of these Low Church fellows, about our gowns and altars; our views of the sacrament, and our high notions of the priesthood. These Low Church people are actually _Methodists_. They would rob the church of all dignity, and turn the priest of the altar into the ranter of the conventicle,--" "We are not troubled with bishops, nor apostolic successions," interrupted Bulgin: "High and Low Church don't trouble us.--Our deacons want a minister; they _call_ him and _pay_ him. Now, if our church admitted of a bishop, I think that--" he put his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and surveyed his heavy limbs with great complacency, "that your humble servant would make a--" "Bishop?" cried Herman, with a laugh. "Ay, and a capital bishop, too, if all be true that these Low Church fellows say of the Bishop of your church. I am a man of _feeling_, eh, my boy?"