Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/232

226 And if it happens that doubts do enter into the minds of the clergy (and in familiar intercourse with them one soon finds that they are not uncommon—I have sometimes heard priests openly express the most cynical scepticism) what time has the ordinary priest to make a sincere and protracted study of his opinions? With all my privileges and opportunities for study it cost me the better part of ten years of constant reading and thought to come to a final and reliable decision. The fact that the actual seceders from the Church are usually men who have had special opportunity and a well-known tendency for study is significant enough; the fact that few emerge from the ordinary ranks of the clergy with convictions firm enough to face the painful struggle of secession should not be surprising. Active external occupation banishes doubt from consciousness; to deliberately resort to it for that purpose would be dishonest; few men would subscribe to the Catholic rule, that doubt must be suppressed at once, yet it is the ordinary fate of the clergyman. I experienced a relief myself during the initial labours for my college, but once my work dropped into some kind of routine, the old questions reappeared, and I determined to answer them, cost what it might.

My doubts were of a philosophical and fundamental character. I had felt that, until the basic truths of religion were firmly assented to, the Anglican controversy had little interest for me, and even the