had held the parish of Cailsham, fulfilling all his
duties by that rule of thumb which is the refuge to all those lacking
in initiative. Not one of the parishioners could find any fault with
him, yet none bore him respect. They blinked through his services.
During his deliberate intoning of the lessons, they thought of all
their worldly affairs, and while he preached, they slept.

Hundreds of parishes are served with men like the Rev. Samuel Bishop.
It is half the decay of Christianity that the prospect of a fat living
will induce men to adopt the profession of the Church. This is the
irony of life in all religions, that to be kept going, to increase
and multiply, they must be financially sound; yet as soon as that
financial security is reached, you have men pouring into their
offices who seek no more than a comfortable living.

There is only one true religion, the ministry of the head to the
devotion of the heart. You need no priesthood here, but the
priesthood of conscience; you need no costly erection of churches,
but the open world of God's house of worship. There is no necessity
for the training of voices, when the choir of Nature can sing in
harmony as no voice ever sang. There is no call now for the two or
three to gather together. The group system has had its day, has done
its work. The two or three who gather together now, do so, not in
a communion of mind, but in criticism and fear. Each knows quite well
what the other is thinking of. Where is the necessity for one common
prayer to bring their souls together? Their souls are already tearing
at each other's throats.

You would not have found the Rev. Samuel Bishop agreeing to this.
How could any man consent to give up his livelihood, even for the
truth? This gentleman would have stayed on in his parish, happy in
his hopeless incompetence, until his parishioners might have sent
in a third request for his retirement, had not the irony of
circumstance broken him upon its unyielding anvil.

For ten years, as has been said, he had held the rectorship of the
parish of Cailsham. Sally was then fourteen years of age. Her mother,
one of those hard yet well-featured women upon whom the struggle of
life wears with but little ill-effect, had endeavoured to bring her
up in the first belief of social importance consistent, to an
illogical mind, with the teachings of her husband's calling. But she
had failed. It was grained in the nature of Sally to let the morrow
take