worship of intellect and science as such which
appeared in Elsmere's talk, in Elsmere's choice of friends. It was the
eternal cry of the mystic of all ages.

'Scholarship! Learning!' Eyes and lips flashed into a vehement scorn.
'You allow them a value in themselves, apart from the Christian's test.
It is the modern canker, the modern curse! Thank God, my years in London
burnt it out of me! Oh, my friend, what have you and I to do with all
these curious triflings, which lead men oftener to rebellion than to
worship? Is this a time for wholesale trust, for a maudlin universal
sympathy? Nay, rather a day of suspicion, a day of repression!--a time
for trampling on the lusts of the mind no less than the lusts of the
body, a time when it is better to believe than to know, to pray than to
understand!'

Robert was silent a moment, and they stood together, Newcome's gaze of
fiery appeal fixed upon him.

'We are differently made, you and I' said the young Rector at last
with difficulty. 'Where you see temptation I see opportunity. I cannot
conceive of God as the Arch-plotter against His own creation!'

Newcome dropped his hold abruptly.

'A groundless optimism,' he said with harshness. 'On the track of the
soul from birth to death there are two sleuth-hounds--Sin and Satan.
Mankind forever flies them, is forever vanquished and devoured. I
see life always as a thread-like path between abysses along which man
_creeps_'--and his gesture illustrated the words--'with bleeding hands
and feet toward one-narrow-solitary outlet. Woe to him if he turn to the
right hand or the left--"I will repay, saith the Lord!"'

Elsmere drew himself up suddenly; the words seemed to him a blasphemy.
Then something stayed the vehement answer on his lips. It was a sense
of profound, intolerable pity. What a maimed life! what an indomitable
soul! Husbandhood, fatherhood, and all the sacred education that flows
from human joy; for ever self-forbidden, and this grind creed for
recompense!

He caught Newcome's hand with a kind filial eagerness.

'You are a perpetual lesson to me,' he said, most gently. 'When the
world is too much with me, I think of you and am rebuked. God bless you!
But I know myself. If I could see life and God as you see them for one
hour, I should cease to be a Christian in the next!'

A flush of something like sombre resentment passed over Newcome's face.
There is a tyrannical element in all fanaticism, an element which makes