; but that is between you and
your conscience.

They dined early, and in the evening, Bertram and his host walked
out. Hitherto they had had but little opportunity of conversation,
and Bertram longed to talk to some one of what was within his breast.
On this occasion, however, he failed. Conversation will not always go
exactly as one would have it.

"I was glad to see you at church to-day," said the parson. "To tell
you the truth, I did not expect it. I hope it was not intended as a
compliment to me."

"I rather fear it was, Arthur."

"You mean that you went because you did not like to displease us by
staying away?"

"Something like it," said Bertram, affecting to laugh. "I do not want
your mother and sisters, or you either, to regard me as an ogre. In
England, at any rate in the country in England, one is an ogre if one
doesn't go to church. It does not much matter, I believe, what one
does when one is there; so long as one is quiet, and lets the parson
have his say."

"There is nothing so easy as ridicule, especially in matters of
religion."

"Quite true. But then it is again true that it is very hard to laugh
at anything that is not in some point ridiculous."

"And God's worship is ridiculous?"

"No; but any pretence of worshipping God is so. And as it is but a
step from the ridiculous to the sublime, and as the true worship of
God is probably the highest sublimity to which man can reach; so,
perhaps, is he never so absolutely absurd, in such a bathos of the
ridiculous, as when he pretends to do so."

"Every effort must sometimes fall short of success."

"I'll explain what I mean," said Bertram, attending more to himself
than his companion. "What idea of man can be so magnificent as that
which represents him with his hands closed, and his eyes turned to
that heaven with which he holds communion? But imagine the man so
placed, and holding no such communion! You will at once have run down
the whole gamut of humanity from St. Paul to Pecksniff."

"But that has nothing to do with belief. It is for the man to take
care that he be, if possible, nearer to St. Paul than to Pecksniff."

"No, it has nothing to do with belief; but it is a gauge, the only
gauge we have, of what belief a man has. How many of those who were
sitting by silently while you preached really believed?"

"All, I hope; all, I trust. I firmly trust that they are all
believers; all, including yourself."

"I wonder whether there was one;