he society of any
who were alien to it. He saw none of his neighbours; once only he had
been induced to attend a hunt ball. The doctrine, _Extra Ecclesiam
nulla salus_, he adopted in all its rigidity. He fulfilled Newman's
ideal to the very letter: he was "anxious about his soul". He never
gave anything else a serious thought. To escape hell--that nameless
terror which stirs the soul of man to its very depths, as Mrs. Ward
very aptly quotes from Virgil on her title page--this was the purpose
for which Helbeck of Bannisdale conceived he had been placed here by a
beneficent God. And on the supposition that "Acheron" is a reality,
Helbeck was absolutely right. If hell is indeed "open to Christians,"
and if the path to life be exceeding strait and narrow, our bounden
duty, as men of common sense, would be to "go sell all we had and give
to" orphanages, like the Squire of Bannisdale, and appease this gloomy
God by a life of austerity and utter renunciation.

Why, then, do not all Christians turn Helbecks? Simply because for the
very life of them they cannot believe in their own inspired
eschatology. Verbally, of course, they assent to the whole code of
immoralities connected with future retribution, but "a certain
obstinate rationality" in them prevents their translating their faith
into practice. Hence, the Catholics we meet are no more Helbecks than
ourselves. They do not believe in emptying their houses for the sake
of orphanages, fasting rigorously in Lent, abstaining from intercourse
with their fellow-beings, or going about chanting, "Outside the Church
no salvation". Quite the contrary. But the truth remains that Helbeck
was true to the ideal, and because he was, it is possible to see a
romance and a dignity in his life, not always observable in his modern
co-religionists. Nobody has anything to say against _their_ "version"
of Christianity, because it is, to all intents and purposes, identical
with the sane ideals supplied by modern thought. No French or Italian
statesman would have one word to say against them, but they have a
morbid dread of Helbecks. If the Helbeck ideal were multiplied
indefinitely, it requires very little foresight to pronounce the
gradual extinction of the commonwealth. A nation of men who were
simply and seriously living so as to escape Hades would make a speedy
end of the most prosperous community.

And yet this man had once lived, aye and loved. But his love was
lawless, a