The result was that Oliver found himself isolated and ostracised, viewed as a contumacious chapel member, suffered of course to continue among the loyal members, because there was no formula by which he could be expelled on such grounds, but no longer trusted and approved of; so far from it, he was in the meantime an object of reprobation to the greater number of his brethren. Perhaps it could not be helped, perhaps he partly deserved his condemnation. For Oliver was not altogether clear in his judgment and conscience where nonconformity was concerned. He was by constitution a many-sided man, prone to eclecticism on most subjects, except, indeed, on what were to him the eternal verities of right and wrong in life, and in a divinely ordained religion. He must always be more or less at variance with men who were never divided in their minds on the merits of all other questions which, to Oliver Constable, were, to say the least, open to discussion. He had read and seen a good deal on both sides of English ecclesiastical history. He had sympathies with both. His heroes stood ranked under opposing banners. He gave in his adherence to Jeremy Taylor and Bishop Butler and Samuel Wilberforce, as well as to Richard Baxter and John Wesley and Robert Hall. But Oliver had been brought up a nonconformist. He had gone with his father to the chapel, while Fan had gone with her mother to the church. There had been no necessary strife in the family on this account. Peter Constable, though a man of inferior abilities to his son, had possessed some mental features in common with Oliver. Peter had respected his wife’s form of faith as she had respected his. Occasionally he had joined in her service and she had joined in his, but in proportion as there was no rancorous war of creeds, there had been no proselytism. To Oliver the chapel was the church of his fathers, and of his section of the community. He was perfectly sensible of the defects of its system, but he was far from prepared to grant that the merits did not exceed the defects, and still less that the defects of dissenters were more ruinous than the shortcomings of churchmen.