Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/367

Letter 30] he was ordained, he may very well have discerned no difficulties at all in the career before him, nothing but the prospect of a noble work, to which he felt himself called. His life was probably spent in a public boarding-school, where he scarcely ever had a minute to himself for thought and meditation; it being the ideal of the educator so to engross the time and energy of each pupil in studies or in games that the average youth might be kept out of moral mischief and the clever youth might get a scholarship at Oxford or Cambridge. When he came to the University he found himself expected to devote himself to "reading for a degree," and there was little or no time for theology; after taking his degree he found himself under the necessity of earning his living, and if he was intending to become a clergyman he naturally desired to be ordained as soon as possible. If he was very fortunate, he may have contrived (as I did) to get a year's reading at theology while he supported himself by taking pupils; but that was probably the utmost of his preparation. Soon after reaching his twenty-third year he was ordained. And now, for the first time, leaving school and college, he begins to realize what life means, and to think for himself. Can we wonder that this "thinking for himself" produces considerable changes of thought? If he is healthy, and active in his parish, and has not much time for reflection and reading, the changes will be long deferred, and he will be scarcely conscious of them: but if he has any mind at all in him, and gives it the least exercise, it is hardly possible that an able and honest student of the Bible at the age of forty-six, when he comes to compare the opinions of his manhood with those of his youth, will not find that he has ceased to believe, or at all events to be certain of, the historical accuracy of a good deal which he accepted with unquestioning confidence at the age of twenty-three.