and will, which we dare
not falsify; which we believe will tell their own story better than
we can tell it for them. If our eyes are dimmed, we think it safer
to clear them, which do belong to us, than to bedevil, by the light
of those very ALREADY DIMMED eyes, the objects round, which do not
belong to us. Whether we are consistent or not about the
corruptness of man, we are about the incorruptness of God; and
therefore about that of the facts by which God teaches men: and
believe, and will continue to believe, that the blackest of all
sins, the deepest of all Atheisms, that which, above all things,
proves no faith in God's government of the universe, no sense of His
presence, no understanding of His character, is--a lie.

'One word more--Unless you tell your father within twenty-four hours
after receiving this letter, I will. And I, being a Protestant (if
cursing Popery means Protestantism), mean what I say.'

As Lancelot walked up to the Priory that morning, the Reverend
Panurgus O'Blareaway dashed out of a cottage by the roadside, and
seized him unceremoniously by the shoulders. He was a specimen of
humanity which Lancelot could not help at once liking and despising;
a quaint mixture of conceit and earnestness, uniting the shrewdness
of a stockjobber with the frolic of a schoolboy broke loose. He was
rector of a place in the west of Ireland, containing some ten
Protestants and some thousand Papists. Being, unfortunately for
himself, a red-hot Orangeman, he had thought fit to quarrel with the
priest, in consequence of which he found himself deprived both of
tithes and congregation; and after receiving three or four Rockite
letters, and a charge of slugs through his hat (of which he always
talked as if being shot at was the most pleasant and amusing feature
of Irish life), he repaired to England, and there, after trying to
set up as popular preacher in London, declaiming at Exeter Hall, and
writing for all the third-rate magazines, found himself incumbent of
Lower Whitford. He worked there, as he said himself, 'like a
horse;' spent his mornings in the schools, his afternoons in the
cottages; preached four or five extempore sermons every week to
overflowing congregations; took the lead, by virtue of the 'gift of
the gab,' at all 'religious' meetings for ten miles round; and
really did a great deal of good in his way. He had an unblushing
candour about his own worldly ambi