h teaching were persisted in
we should lose our best people. Now, I don't want to be angry with you,
quite the contrary, but I wish to put it to you, as your spiritual head
and adviser, that your idea of religion is by no means agreeable to the
needs and necessities of the nineteenth century. There is no freedom in
such a faith, and St. Paul says, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there
is liberty.' But the theory of your religion is not more unscriptural
than its application is unwholesome. Yours is a gloomy faith, my dear
Storm, and what did Luther say of a gloomy faith?--that the devil was
very apt to be lurking behind it. As for himself he married, you may
remember; he had children, he played chess, he loved to see young people
dancing----"

"I don't object to the dancing, sir," said John Storm. "I only object to
the tune."

"What do you mean?" said the canon, not without insolence, and the
perpendicular wrinkles became large and heavy.

"I mean, sir," said John Storm, "that half the young people nowadays--the
young women in the west of London especially--are asked to dance to the
Dead March."

And then he spoke of the infamous case of Mercy Macrae, how she was being
bought and sold, and how scandalous was the reputation of the man she was
required to marry.

"That was what I was coming down to speak about, sir--to ask you to save
this innocent girl from such a mockery of holy wedlock. She is not a
child, and the law can not help her, but you can do so, because the power
of the Church is at your back. You have only to set your face against
this infamy, and say----"

"My dear Mr. Storm," the canon was smiling condescendingly and swinging
his glasses, "the business of the Church is to solemnize marriages, not
to make them. But if the young lady comes to me I will say: 'My dear
young lady, the conditions you complain of are more common than you
suppose; put aside all foolish, romantic notions, make a nest for
yourself as comfortably as you can, and come back in a year to thank
me.'"

John Storm was on his feet; the blood was mounting to his face and
tingling in his fingers.

"And so these men are to make their wives of the daughters of the poor
first, and then ask the Church to solemnize their polygamy----"

But the canon had lifted his hand to silence him.

"My dear young friend, a policy like yours would decimate the House of
Commons and abolish the House of Lords. Practical religion has a sweet
reasona