an's
pride is a thing to turn a saint sick with disgust, so utterly is it at
discord with the lovely human harmony he imagines himself the minister
of. He is the Pharisee, it may be the good Pharisee, of the kingdom of
Heaven; but if the proud churchman be in the kingdom at all, it must be
as one of the least in it. I don't believe one in ten who is guilty of
this pride is aware of the sin of it. Only the other evening I heard a
worthy canon say, it may have been more in joke than appeared, that he
would have all dissenters burned. Now the canon would not hang one of
them--but he does look down on them all with contempt. Such miserable
paltry weaknesses and wickednesses, for in a servant of the Kingdom the
feeling which suggests such a speech is wicked, are the moth holes in
the garments of the Church, the teredo in its piles, the dry rot in its
floors, the scaling and crumbling of its buttresses. They do more to
ruin what such men call the Church, even in outward respects, than any
of the rude attacks of those whom they thus despise. He who, in the name
of Christ, pushes his neighbor from him, is a schismatic, and that of
the worst and only dangerous type! But we had better be going. It's of
no use telling you to take your waterproof; you'd only be giving it to
the first poor woman we picked up."

"I may as well have the good of it till then," said Helen, and ran to
fetch it, while the curate went to bring his boat to the house.

When he opened the door, there was no longer a spot of earth or of sky
to be seen--only water, and the gray sponge filling the upper air,
through which coursed multitudinous perpendicular runnels of water. Clad
in a pair of old trowsers and a jersey, he went wading, and where the
ground dipped, swimming, to the western gate of the churchyard. In a few
minutes he was at the kitchen window, holding the boat in a long
painter, for the water, although quite up to the rectory walls, was not
yet deep enough there to float the boat with any body in it. The
servants handed him out the great cans they used at school-teas, full of
hot coffee, and baskets of bread, and he placed them in the boat,
covering them with a tarpaulin. Then Helen appeared at the door, in her
waterproof, with a great fur-cloak--to throw over him, she said, when
she took the oars, for she meant to have her share of the fun: it was so
seldom there was any going on a Sunday!--How she would have shocked her
aunt, and better women th