Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/78

 with their pockets full of apples, bawling out Hebrew psalms of which they neither feel nor understand a word?'

Argemone tried to look very much shocked at this piece of bombast. Lancelot evidently meant it as such, but he eyed her all the while as if there was solemn earnest under the surface.

'Oh, Mr. Smith!' she said, 'how can you dare talk so of a liturgy compiled by the wisest and holiest of all countries and ages? You revile that of whose beauty you are not qualified to judge!'

'There must be a beauty in it all, or such as you are would not love it.'

'Oh,' she said, hopefully, 'that you would but try the Church system! How you would find it harmonise and methodise every day, every thought, for you! But I cannot explain myself. Why not go to our vicar, and open your doubts to him?'

'Pardon, but you must excuse me.'

'Why? He is one of the saintliest of men!'

'To tell the truth, I have been to him already.'

'You do not mean it! And what did he tell you?'

'What the rest of the world does—hearsays.'

'But did you not find him most kind?'

'I went to him to be comforted and guided. He received me as a criminal. He told me that my first duty was penitence; that, as long as I lived the life I did, he could not dare to cast his pearls before swine by answering my doubts; that I was in a state incapable of appreciating spiritual truths; and, therefore, he had no right to tell me any.'