more
hopeful. He believed himself, no less sincerely, to be slighting and
despising the tender love of God for all the sheep of His hand, when he
made religion into either a subtle and metaphysical thing on the one
hand, or a conventional and ceremonious business on the other. The
peace that the world cannot give--how desirable, how remote that
seemed! How large and free a quality it was! But the peace promised
him by his friend seemed to him the apathy of a soul crushed and
confined in the narrowest of dungeons, and denying the existence of the
free air and the sun because of the streaming walls and shapen stones
which hemmed it round.

XXVI

Activity--Work--Isolation

Hugh went once to spend a few days with an old friend who had held an
important living in a big country town. It was a somewhat bewildering
experience. His friend was what would be called a practical person,
and loved organisation--the word was often on his lips--with a
consuming passion. Hugh saw that he was a very happy man; he was a big
fellow, with a sanguine complexion and a resonant voice. He was always
in high spirits: he banged doors behind him, and when he hurried
upstairs, the whole house seemed to shake. Every moment of his day was
full to the brim of occupation. He could be heard shouting directions
in the garden and stables at an early hour; he received and wrote a
great many letters; he attended many committees and meetings. He
hurried about the country, he made speeches, he preached. Hugh heard
one of his sermons, which was delivered with abundant geniality. It
consisted of a somewhat obvious paraphrase of a Scripture scene--the
slaughter of the prophets of Baal by Elijah. The preacher described
the ugly carnage with much gusto. He then invited his hearers to stamp
out evil with similar vigour, and ended with drawing a highly
optimistic picture of the world, representing evil and sin as a kind of
skulking and lingering contagion, which God was doing His best to get
rid of, and which was indeed only kept alive by the foolish perversity
of a few abandoned persons, and would soon be extirpated altogether if
only enough committees would meet and take the thing up in a
businesslike way. It was in a sense a vigorous performance, and Hugh
thought that though there was little attempt to bind up the
broken-hearted, yet he could conceive its having an inspiriting effect
on people who felt themselves on the right side.