"
When Ernest came to London he intended doing a good deal of
house-to-house visiting, but Pryer had talked him out of this even
before he settled down in his new and strangely-chosen apartments. The
line he now took was that if people wanted Christ, they must prove
their want by taking some little trouble, and the trouble required
of them was that they should come and seek him, Ernest, out; there
he was in the midst of them ready to teach; if people did not choose
to come to him it was no fault of his.
"My great business here," he writes again to Dawson, "is to observe.
I am not doing much in parish work beyond my share of the daily
services. I have a man's Bible Class, and a boy's Bible Class, and a
good many young men and boys to whom I give instruction one way or
another; then there are the Sunday School children, with whom I fill
my room on a Sunday evening as full as it will hold, and let them sing
hymns and chants. They like this. I do a great deal of reading-
chiefly of books which Pryer and I think most likely to help; we
find nothing comparable to the Jesuits. Pryer is a thorough gentleman,
and an admirable man of business -no less observant of the things of
this world, in fact, than of the things above; by a brilliant coup
he has retrieved, or nearly so, a rather serious loss which threatened
to delay indefinitely the execution of our great scheme.
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