preached to us, as a commercial speculation, for a century, and that we still believe in a God?"
"It couldn't have gone on so long," Lady Muriel musingly remarked, "if the Opposition hadn't been practically silenced——put under what the French call la clôture. Surely in any lecture-hall, or in private society, such teaching would soon have been hooted down?"
"I trust so," said Arthur: "and, though I don't want to see 'brawling in church' legalised, I must say that our preachers enjoy an enormous privilege——which they ill deserve, and which they misuse terribly. We put our man into a pulpit, and we virtually tell him 'Now, you may stand there and talk to us for half-an-hour. We won't interrupt you by so much as a word! You shall have it all your own way!' And what does he give us in return? Shallow twaddle, that, if it were addressed to you over a dinner-table, you would think 'Does the man take me for a fool?'"
The return of Eric from his walk checked the tide of Arthur's eloquence, and, after a few minutes' talk on more conventional topics, we took our leave. Lady Muriel walked with
