as
heretofore, and he struggled in vain against the unseen influence which
he felt to be working in season and out of season against all that he had
been accustomed to consider most distinctive of his party. Where it was,
or what it was, he knew not, nor exactly what it would do next, but he
knew exceedingly well that go where he would it was undermining him; that
it was too persistent for him; that Christina and Charlotte liked it a
great deal better than he did, and that it could end in nothing but Rome.
Easter decorations indeed! Christmas decorations--in reason--were proper
enough, but Easter decorations! well, it might last his time.

This was the course things had taken in the Church of England during the
last forty years. The set has been steadily in one direction. A few men
who knew what they wanted made cats' paws of the Christmas and the
Charlottes, and the Christmas and the Charlottes made cats' paws of the
Mrs Goodhews and the old Miss Wrights, and Mrs Goodhews and old Miss
Wrights told the Mr Goodhews and young Miss Wrights what they should do,
and when the Mr Goodhews and the young Miss Wrights did it the little
Goodhews and the rest of the spiritual flock did as they did, and the
Theobalds went for nothing; step by step, day by day, year by year,
parish by parish, diocese by diocese this was how it was done. And yet
the Church of England looks with no friendly eyes upon the theory of
Evolution or Descent with Modification.

My hero thought over these things, and remembered many a _ruse_ on the
part of Christina and Charlotte, and many a detail of the struggle which
I cannot further interrupt my story to refer to, and he remembered his
father's favourite retort that it could only end in Rome. When he was a
boy he had firmly believed this, but he smiled now as he thought of
another alternative clear enough to himself, but so horrible that it had
not even occurred to Theobald--I mean the toppling over of the whole
system. At that time he welcomed the hope that the absurdities and
unrealities of the Church would end in her downfall. Since then he has
come to think very differently, not as believing in the cow jumping over
the moon more than he used to, or more, probably, than nine-tenths of the
clergy themselves--who know as well as he does that their outward and
visible symbols are out of date--but because he knows the baffling
complexity of the problem when it comes to deciding what is actually to