out even to minor
entertainments, because I knew that in all probability close
interrogation would be made as to my spiritual condition.

Let me be reminiscent and recall one case. I was a boy at school and
spending my Easter vacation away from home and with friends. It was my
lot to have to dine one night with an old friend of my father's, a
person of some distinction, who having, I believe, been a _viveur_ in
his youth, had in later years embraced the most ferocious type of
Evangelicanism. When the ladies had retired I was left alone with this
formidable person, whom I eyed much as a rabbit eyes a snake into whose
cage he has been introduced. Nor were my fears groundless, for no sooner
was the room empty than he peremptorily demanded of me whether I was
saved. On hearing my trembling but perfectly truthful reply that I
really did not know, he struck the table with his fist (I can see the
whole thing quite plainly to-day, though it is five-and-forty years
ago), exclaiming, "Then you are a fool, and if you were to die to-night
you most certainly would be damned." I ask those who were brought up in
a more kindly and more rational scheme of Christianity whether it is any
wonder that those whose youth was spent in these gloomy shades should
welcome the thought that there was no such being as a God?

Associated with this gloomy creed a new series of sins was invented, as
if there were not enough already in the world. It was sinful to dance,
even under the most domestic and proper circumstances. It was a sin to
play cards, even when there was no money on the game. It was a sin to
go to the theatre, even to behold the most inspiring and instructive
plays. It was even held by some, as we shall see, that the writing of
stories or works of imagination was sinful. I once heard a professor of
this creed express the doubt whether Shakespeare had not, on the whole,
done much more harm than good, and state that he himself would not allow
the works of Dickens to occupy a place in a hospital library, from
which, as a matter of fact--for on this point the discussion had
arisen--they had been excluded by the then chaplain of the institution,
a man of like views. In fact, the idea of God which was presented to the
youth of that period and brought up under such influences was--I do not
say wilfully--that of a kind of super-policeman: a hard-hearted
policeman, with an exaggerated code of misdoings, forever waiting round
a corner to pounce