had heard in his life. He more than doubted, whether, if his good
father had heard it, he would not have made it an exception to his
favourite dictum. He came away marvelling with himself what the preacher
could mean, and whether he had misunderstood him. Did he mean that
Unitarians were only bad reasoners, and might be as good Christians as
orthodox believers? He could mean nothing else. But what if, after all,
he was right? He indulged the thought awhile. "Then every one is what
Sheffield calls a sham, more or less; and there was no reason for being
annoyed at any one. Then I was right originally in wishing to take every
one for what he was. Let me think; every one a sham ... shams are
respectable, or rather no one is respectable. We can't do without some
outward form of belief; one is not truer than another; that is, all are
equally true.... _All_ are true.... That is the better way of taking it;
none are shams, all are true.... All are _true_! impossible! one as true
as another! why then it is as true that our Lord is a mere man, as that
He is God. He could not possibly mean this; what _did_ he mean?"

So Charles went on, painfully perplexed, yet out of this perplexity two
convictions came upon him, the first of them painful too; that he could
not take for gospel everything that was said, even by authorities of the
place and divines of name; and next, that his former amiable feeling of
taking every one for what he was, was a dangerous one, leading with
little difficulty to a sufferance of every sort of belief, and
legitimately terminating in the sentiment expressed in Pope's Universal
Prayer, which his father had always held up to him as a pattern specimen
of shallow philosophism:--

"Father of all, in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord."

CHAPTER X.

Charles went up this term for his first examination, and this caused him
to remain in Oxford some days after the undergraduate part of his
college had left for the Long Vacation. Thus he came across Mr. Vincent,
one of the junior tutors, who was kind enough to ask him to dine in
Common-room on Sunday, and on several mornings made him take some turns
with him up and down the Fellows' walk in the college garden.

A few years make a great difference in the standing of men at Oxford,
and this made Mr. Vincent what is called a don in the eyes of persons
who were very little younger tha