e is a fool if he persists
in differing from him. He says "which is absurd," and declines to
discuss the matter further. Faith and authority, therefore, prove to be
as necessary for him as for anyone else. "By faith in what, then," asked
Ernest of himself, "shall a just man endeavour to live at this present
time?" He answered to himself, "At any rate not by faith in the
supernatural element of the Christian religion."

And how should he best persuade his fellow-countrymen to leave off
believing in this supernatural element? Looking at the matter from a
practical point of view he thought the Archbishop of Canterbury afforded
the most promising key to the situation. It lay between him and the
Pope. The Pope was perhaps best in theory, but in practice the
Archbishop of Canterbury would do sufficiently well. If he could only
manage to sprinkle a pinch of salt, as it were, on the Archbishop's tail,
he might convert the whole Church of England to free thought by a _coup
de main_. There must be an amount of cogency which even an Archbishop--an
Archbishop whose perceptions had never been quickened by imprisonment for
assault--would not be able to withstand. When brought face to face with
the facts, as he, Ernest, could arrange them; his Grace would have no
resource but to admit them; being an honourable man he would at once
resign his Archbishopric, and Christianity would become extinct in
England within a few months' time. This, at any rate, was how things
ought to be. But all the time Ernest had no confidence in the
Archbishop's not hopping off just as the pinch was about to fall on him,
and this seemed so unfair that his blood boiled at the thought of it. If
this was to be so, he must try if he could not fix him by the judicious
use of bird-lime or a snare, or throw the salt on his tail from an
ambuscade.

To do him justice it was not himself that he greatly cared about. He
knew he had been humbugged, and he knew also that the greater part of the
ills which had afflicted him were due, indirectly, in chief measure to
the influence of Christian teaching; still, if the mischief had ended
with himself, he should have thought little about it, but there was his
sister, and his brother Joey, and the hundreds and thousands of young
people throughout England whose lives were being blighted through the
lies told them by people whose business it was to know better, but who
scamped their work and shirked difficulties inst