r had devoted so much meditation.

"I can scarcely convey to you," said Kenelm, "the intense admiration
with which I have studied your noble work, 'Approach to the Angels.' It
produced a great effect on me in the age between boyhood and youth. But
of late some doubts on the universal application of your doctrine have
crept into my mind."

"Ay, indeed?" said Mr. Roach, with an expression of interest in his
face.

"And I come to you for their solution."

Mr. Roach turned away his head, and pushed the bottle to Kenelm.

"I am quite willing to concede," resumed the heir of the Chillinglys,
"that a priesthood should stand apart from the distracting cares of a
family, and pure from all carnal affections."

"Hem, hem," grunted Mr. Roach, taking his knee on his lap and caressing
it.

"I go further," continued Kenelm, "and supposing with you that the
Confessional has all the importance, whether in its monitory or its
cheering effects upon repentant sinners, which is attached to it by
the Roman Catholics, and that it ought to be no less cultivated by the
Reformed Church, it seems to me essential that the Confessor should have
no better half to whom it can be even suspected he may, in an unguarded
moment, hint at the frailties of one of her female acquaintances."

"I pushed that argument too far," murmured Roach.

"Not a bit of it. Celibacy in the Confessor stands or falls with the
Confessional. Your argument there is as sound as a bell. But when it
comes to the layman, I think I detect a difference."

Mr. Roach shook his head, and replied stoutly, "No; if celibacy be
incumbent on the one, it is equally incumbent on the other. I say 'if.'"

"Permit me to deny that assertion. Do not fear that I shall insult your
understanding by the popular platitude; namely, that if celibacy were
universal, in a very few years the human race would be extinct. As you
have justly observed, in answer to that fallacy, 'It is the duty of each
human soul to strive towards the highest perfection of the spiritual
state for itself, and leave the fate of the human race to the care of
the Creator.' If celibacy be necessary to spiritual perfection, how do
we know but that it may be the purpose and decree of the All Wise that
the human race, having attained to that perfection, should disappear
from earth? Universal celibacy would thus be the euthanasia of mankind.
On the other hand, if the Creator decided that the human race, having
culminated to