Shaw, and by looking at the "Vestiges," he was
as yet too much stunned to realise the change which was coming over
him. In each case the momentum of old habits carried him forward in
the old direction. He therefore called on Pryer, and spent an hour and
more with him.
He did not say that he had been visiting among his neighbours;
this to Pryer would have been like a red rag to a bull. He only talked
in much his usual vein about the proposed College, the lamentable want
of interest in spiritual things which was characteristic of modern
society, and other kindred matters; he concluded by saying that for
the present he feared Pryer was indeed right, and that nothing could
be done.
"As regards the laity," said Pryer, "nothing; not until we have a
discipline which we can enforce with pains and penalties. How can a
sheep dog work a flock of sheep unless he can bite occasionally as
well as bark? But as regards ourselves we can do much."
Pryer's manner was strange throughout the conversation, as though he
were thinking all the time of something else. His eyes wandered
curiously over Ernest, as Ernest had often noticed them wander before:
the words were about Church discipline, but somehow or other the
discipline part of the story had a knack of dropping out after
having been again and again emphatically declared to apply to the
laity and not to the clergy: once indeed Pryer had pettishly
exclaimed: "Oh, bother the College of Spiritual Pathology.
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