er be so truly the friend of his
parishioners as to deserve their confidence from childhood upwards, may
be flouted as a sentimental ideal; but he is assuredly only their enemy
in showing his Lutheran detestation of the sale of indulgences by
broadcasting these gratis from his pulpit.

The inconvenience and unpleasantness of a catechism concerning itself
with the personal practice as well as the general theory of duty, are
indeed perfectly conceivable by me: yet I am not convinced that such
manner of catechism would therefore be less medicinal; and during the
past ten years it has often been matter of amazed thought with me, while
our President at Corpus read prayers to the chapel benches, what might
by this time have been the effect on the learning as well as the creed
of the University, if, forty years ago, our stern old Dean Gaisford, of
the House of Christ, instead of sending us to chapel as to the house of
correction, when we missed a lecture, had inquired, before he allowed us
to come to chapel at all, whether we were gamblers, harlot-mongers, or
in concealed and selfish debt.

264. I observe with extreme surprise in the preceding letters the
unconsciousness of some of your correspondents, that there ever was such
a thing as discipline in the Christian Church. Indeed, the last
wholesome instance of it I can remember was when my own great-great
uncle Maitland lifted Lady ---- from his altar-rails, and led her back to
her seat before the congregation, when she offered to take the
Sacrament, being at enmity with her son.[173] But I believe a few hours
honestly spent by any clergyman on his Church history would show him
that the Church's confidence in her prayer has been always exactly
proportionate to the strictness of her discipline; that her present
fright at being caught praying by a chemist or an electrician, results
mainly from her having allowed her twos and threes gathered in the name
of Christ to become sixes and sevens gathered in the name of Belial; and
that therefore her now needfulest duty is to explain to her stammering
votaries, extremely doubtful as they are of the effect of their
supplications either on politics or the weather, that although Elijah
was a man subject to like passions as we are, he had them better under
command; and that while the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man
availeth much, the formal and lukewarm one of an iniquitous man
availeth--much the other way.

Such an instruct