He should not have had the courage to give
up all for Christ's sake, but now Christ had mercifully taken all, and
lo! it seemed as though all were found.
As the days went slowly by he came to see that Christianity and
the denial of Christianity after all met as much as any other extremes
do; it was a fight about names -not about things; practically the
Church of Rome, the Church of England, and the free-thinker have the
same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman; for he is the most
perfect saint who is the most perfect gentleman. Then he saw also that
it matters little what profession, whether of religion or
irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with
charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter
end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and
not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies. This was the
crowning point of the edifice; when he had got here he no longer
wished to molest even the Pope. The Archbishop of Canterbury might
have hopped about all round him and even picked crumbs out of his hand
without running risk of getting a sly sprinkle of salt. That wary
prelate himself might perhaps have been of a different opinion, but
the robins and thrushes that hop about our lawns are not more
needlessly distrustful of the hand that throws them out crumbs of
bread in winter, than the Archbishop would have been of my hero.
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