lancholy denoument of Crabbe's
sudden death to determine a line of conduct for the future. His mind,
restored to its natural bent, the study of the soul of man and its
relation to the spiritual world, no longer dwelt on Miss Clairville nor
on any other worldly matter, and therefore his next and as it proved
final move was not so peculiar as seemed at first sight; he chose to
enter a religious house and end his days there, as in the heat of
remorseful and involuntary confession he had told Father Rielle. There
was no chance for this last act of abnegation in his own community,
hence the attention he now began to give to the personality and
conversation of the priest, and hence the ultimate triumph of the
Catholic Church. He still loved his own Church, but what was there for
him within her narrow boundaries in the future? That Church said: "You
must be good even if you are narrow, you must practise holiness, you
must stand daily in the fierce light of secular criticism, and you know
you shall be found wanting," and at the voice he quailed, feeling his
weakness. Then it was that Rome claimed him, showing him her unique
position among the Churches. Never allowing or fostering modern doubt,
immune against innovation, with myriad and labyrinthine channels of
work for the different temperaments that entered within her gates, she
presented at that time the spectacle of the only Church not divided
against herself, and Ringfield suddenly yearned towards the cloister,
the cross, the strange, hooded, cloaked men, the pale and grave, or
red-cheeked merry nuns, the rich symbolism of even the simplest
service, and he longed to hurl himself from the outside world to that
beckoning world of monks and monastic quiet. As a Methodist, there was
then no possible opening of the kind he wished for, whatever there may
be at a later day, when hardly any religious body keeps itself to
itself but is daily invaded by efforts and struggles, apings after
something coveted and difficult of attainment, and when the term
evangelical is a word signifying the loosening of all proper bonds and
the admission of dangerous degrees and shades of doubtful moral
unsteadfastness.

He felt an inward shame, a daily humiliation, when he considered his
position; he had disgraced his own Church--would any other Church then
receive him? Finally he sought the priest.

"If I am proved unworthy of the ministrations of the Church I was born
and brought up in, am