It would have been
practically impossible for him to have found another curacy, even if
he had been so minded, but he was not so minded. He hated the life
he had been leading ever since he had begun to read for orders; he
could not argue about it, but simply he loathed it and would have no
more of it. As he dwelt on the prospect of becoming a layman again,
however disgraced, he rejoiced at what had befallen him, and found a
blessing in this very imprisonment which had at first seemed such an
unspeakable misfortune.
Perhaps the shock of so great a change in his surroundings had
accelerated changes in his opinions, just as the cocoons of silkworms,
when sent in baskets by rail, hatch before their time through the
novelty of heat and jolting. But however this may be, his belief in
the stories concerning the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus
Christ, and hence his faith in all the other Christian miracles, had
dropped off him once and for ever. The investigation he had made in
consequence of Mr. Shaw's rebuke, hurried though it was, had left a
deep impression upon him, and now he was well enough to read he made
the New Testament his chief study, going through it in the spirit
which Mr.
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