exclusiveness, their pomp and their
intolerance, they could have got so far away from the example of their
Master, so that as one looks upon Him and them, one feels that there is
absolute deep antagonism and that one cannot speak of the Church and
Christ, but only of the Church or Christ.

And yet every Church produces beautiful souls, though it may be debated
whether "produces" or "contains" is the truthful word. We have but to
fall back upon our own personal experience if we have lived long and
mixed much with our fellow-men. I have myself lived during the seven
most impressionable years of my life among Jesuits, the most maligned
of all ecclesiastical orders, and I have found them honourable and good
men, in all ways estimable outside the narrowness which limits the
world to Mother Church. They were athletes, scholars, and gentlemen,
nor can I ever remember any examples of that casuistry with which they
are reproached. Some of my best friends have been among the parochial
clergy of the Church of England, men of sweet and saintly character,
whose pecuniary straits were often a scandal and a reproach to the
half-hearted folk who accepted their spiritual guidance. I have known,
also, splendid men among the Nonconformist clergy, who have often been
the champions of liberty, though their views upon that subject have
sometimes seemed to contract when one ventured upon their own domain of
thought. Each creed has brought out men who were an honour to the
human race, and Manning or Shrewsbury, Gordon or Dolling, Booth or
Stopford Brooke, are all equally admirable, however diverse the roots
from which they grow. Among the great mass of the people, too, there
are very many thousands of beautiful souls who have been brought up on
the old-fashioned lines, and who never heard of spiritual communion or
any other of those matters which have been discussed in these essays,
and yet have reached a condition of pure spirituality such as all of us
may envy. Who does not know the maiden aunt, the widowed mother, the
mellowed elderly man, who live upon the hilltops of unselfishness,
shedding kindly thoughts and deeds around them, but with their simple
faith deeply, rooted in anything or everything which has come to them
in a hereditary fashion with the sanction of some particular authority?
I had an aunt who was such an one, and can see her now, worn with
austerity and charity, a small, humble figure, creeping to church at
all hou