t an odious young woman she was, and implored him to save
himself while there was yet time.

But Ernest had not prayed to be made "truly honest and conscientious" for
as many years as Christina had. He tried to conceal what he felt and
thought as well as he could, and led the conversation back to the
difficulties which a clergyman might feel to stand in the way of his
being ordained--not because he had any misgivings, but as a diversion.
His mother, however, thought she had settled all that, and he got no more
out of her. Soon afterwards he found the means of escaping, and was not
slow to avail himself of them.

CHAPTER XLIX

On his return to Cambridge in the May term of 1858, Ernest and a few
other friends who were also intended for orders came to the conclusion
that they must now take a more serious view of their position. They
therefore attended chapel more regularly than hitherto, and held evening
meetings of a somewhat furtive character, at which they would study the
New Testament. They even began to commit the Epistles of St Paul to
memory in the original Greek. They got up Beveridge on the Thirty-nine
Articles, and Pearson on the Creed; in their hours of recreation they
read More's "Mystery of Godliness," which Ernest thought was charming,
and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying," which also impressed him deeply,
through what he thought was the splendour of its language. They handed
themselves over to the guidance of Dean Alford's notes on the Greek
Testament, which made Ernest better understand what was meant by
"difficulties," but also made him feel how shallow and impotent were the
conclusions arrived at by German neologians, with whose works, being
innocent of German, he was not otherwise acquainted. Some of the friends
who joined him in these pursuits were Johnians, and the meetings were
often held within the walls of St John's.

I do not know how tidings of these furtive gatherings had reached the
Simeonites, but they must have come round to them in some way, for they
had not been continued many weeks before a circular was sent to each of
the young men who attended them, informing them that the Rev. Gideon
Hawke, a well-known London Evangelical preacher, whose sermons were then
much talked of, was about to visit his young friend Badcock of St John's,
and would be glad to say a few words to any who might wish to hear them,
in Badcock's rooms on a certain evening in May.

Badcock was one of th