ready enough to save souls, but it must
be only according to rule and regulation. Before the Gospel can be
preached there must be three thousand pounds got together for a
church, and a thousand for an endowment, not to mention the thousand
pounds that the clergyman's education costs: I don't think of his
own keep, sir; that's little enough, often; and those that work
hardest get least pay, it seems to me. But after all that expense,
when they've built the church, it's the tradesmen, and the gentry,
and the old folk that fill it, and the working men never come near
it from one year's end to another.'

'What's the cause, do you think?' asked Lancelot, who had himself
remarked the same thing more than once.

'Half of the reason, sir, I do believe, is that same Prayer-book.
Not that the Prayer-book ain't a fine book enough, and a true one;
but, don't you see, sir, to understand the virtue of it, the poor
fellows ought to be already just what you want to make them.'

'You mean that they ought to be thorough Christians already, to
appreciate the spirituality of the liturgy.'

'You've hit it, sir. And see what comes of the present plan; how a
navvy drops into a church by accident, and there he has to sit like
a fish out of water, through that hour's service, staring or
sleeping, before he can hear a word that he understands; and, sir,
when the sermon does come at last, it's not many of them can make
much out of those fine book-words and long sentences. Why don't
they have a short simple service, now and then, that might catch the
ears of the roughs and the blowens, without tiring out the poor
thoughtless creatures' patience, as they do now?'

'Because,' said Lancelot,--'because--I really don't know why.--But I
think there is a simpler plan than even a ragged service.'

'What, then, sir?'

'Field-preaching. If the mountain won't come to Mahomet, let
Mahomet go to the mountain.'

'Right, sir; right you are. "Go out into the highways and hedges,
and compel them to come in." And why are they to speak to them only
one by one? Why not by the dozen and the hundred? We Wesleyans
know, sir,--for the matter of that, every soldier knows,--what
virtue there is in getting a lot of men together; how good and evil
spread like wildfire through a crowd; and one man, if you can stir
him up, will become leaven to leaven the whole lump. Oh why, sir,
are they so afraid of field-preaching? Was