eems as if I could
shove in some of my own if I had them going through my head once again.
I tell you what: we won't make any fuss about it--what's in a name?--but
from this day you shall be incumbent, and I will be curate. You shall
preach--or what you please, and I shall read the prayers or not, just as
you please. Try what you can make of me, Wingfold. Don't ask me to do
what I can't, but help me to do what I can. Look here--here's what I've
been thinking--it came to me last night as I was walking about here
after coming from Glaston:--here, in this corner of the parish, we are a
long way from church. In the village there, there is no place of worship
except a little Methodist one. There isn't one of their--local
preachers, I believe they call them--that don't preach a deal better
than I could if I tried ever so much. It's vulgar enough sometimes, they
tell me, but then they preach, and mean it. Now I might mean it, but I
shouldn't preach;--for what is it to people at work all the week to have
a man read a sermon to them? You might as well drive a nail by pushing
it in with the palm of your hand. Those men use the hammer. Ill-bred,
conceited fellows, some of them, I happen to know, but they know their
business. Now why shouldn't I build a little place here on my own
ground, and get the bishop to consecrate it? I would read prayers for
you in the abbey church in the morning, and then you would not be too
tired to come and preach here in the evening. I would read the prayers
here too, if you liked."

"I think your scheme delightful," answered the curate, after a moment's
pause. "I would only venture to suggest one improvement--that you should
not have your chapel consecrated. You will find it ever so much more
useful. It will then be dedicated to the God of the whole earth, instead
of the God of the Church of England."

"Why! ain't they the same?" cried the rector, half aghast, as he stopped
and faced round on the curate.

"Yes," answered Wingfold; "and all will be well when the Church of
England really recognizes the fact. Meantime its idea of God is such as
will not at all fit the God of the whole earth. And that is why she is
in bondage. Except she burst the bonds of her own selfishness, she will
burst her heart and go to pieces, as her enemies would have her. Every
piece will be alive, though, I trust, more or less."

"I don't understand you," said the rector. "What has all that to do with
the consecration of m