I
felt myself his intellectual superior. I tripped him up, played with him,
made him expose his weaknesses, till I really began to despise him. May
Heaven forgive me for it! But it was not till long afterwards that I began,
on looking back, to see how worthless was any superior cleverness of mine
before his superior moral and spiritual excellence. That was just what
he would not let me see at the time. I was worshipping intellect, mere
intellect; and thence arose my doubts; and he tried to conquer them by
exciting the very faculty which had begotten them. When will the clergy
learn that their strength is in action, and not in argument? If they are
to reconvert the masses, it must be by noble deeds, as Carlyle says; "not
by noisy theoretic laudation of _a_ Church, but by silent practical
demonstration of _the_ Church."
* * * * *
But, the reader may ask, where was your Bible all this time?
Yes--there was a Bible in my cell--and the chaplain read to me, both
privately and in chapel, such portions of it as he thought suited my case,
or rather his utterly-mistaken view thereof.
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