y proper sense a continuation of the
second, but find it less trouble to think of it as something that we
choose to call new.

But, to let this pass, it was clear that spiritual pathology (I confess
that I do not know myself what spiritual pathology means--but Pryer and
Ernest doubtless did) was the great desideratum of the age. It seemed to
Ernest that he had made this discovery himself and been familiar with it
all his life, that he had never known, in fact, of anything else. He
wrote long letters to his college friends expounding his views as though
he had been one of the Apostolic fathers. As for the Old Testament
writers, he had no patience with them. "Do oblige me," I find him
writing to one friend, "by reading the prophet Zechariah, and giving me
your candid opinion upon him. He is poor stuff, full of Yankee bounce;
it is sickening to live in an age when such balderdash can be gravely
admired whether as poetry or prophecy." This was because Pryer had set
him against Zechariah. I do not know what Zechariah had done; I should
think myself that Zechariah was a very good prophet; perhaps it was
because he was a Bible writer, and not a very prominent one, that Pryer
selected him as one through whom to disparage the Bible in comparison
with the Church.

To his friend Dawson I find him saying a little later on: "Pryer and I
continue our walks, working out each other's thoughts. At first he used
to do all the thinking, but I think I am pretty well abreast of him now,
and rather chuckle at seeing that he is already beginning to modify some
of the views he held most strongly when I first knew him.

"Then I think he was on the high road to Rome; now, however, he seems to
be a good deal struck with a suggestion of mine in which you, too,
perhaps may be interested. You see we must infuse new life into the
Church somehow; we are not holding our own against either Rome or
infidelity." (I may say in passing that I do not believe Ernest had as
yet ever seen an infidel--not to speak to.) "I proposed, therefore, a
few days back to Pryer--and he fell in eagerly with the proposal as soon
as he saw that I had the means of carrying it out--that we should set on
foot a spiritual movement somewhat analogous to the Young England
movement of twenty years ago, the aim of which shall be at once to outbid
Rome on the one hand, and scepticism on the other. For this purpose I
see nothing better than the foundation of an institutio