As for temptations, there could
be few or none in such a place as that. This argument about
cheapness was the one with which she most successfully met Theobald,
who grumbled more suo that he had no sympathy with his son's
extravagance and conceit. When Christina pointed out to him that it
would be cheap he replied that there was something in that.
On Ernest himself the effect was to confirm the good opinion of
himself which had been growing upon him ever since he had begun to
read for orders, and to make him flatter himself that he was among the
few who were ready to give up all for Christ. Ere long he began to
conceive of himself as a man with a mission and a great future. His
lightest and most hastily formed opinions began to be of momentous
importance to him, and he inflicted them, as I have already shown,
on his old friends, week by week becoming more and more entete with
himself and his own crotchets. I should like well enough to draw a
veil over this part of my hero's career, but cannot do so without
marring my story.
In the spring of 1859 I find him writing--
"I cannot call the visible Church Christian till its fruits are
Christian, that is until the fruits of the members of the Church of
England are in conformity, or something like conformity, with her
teaching.
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