"If we are to do any good we must be a closely united body, and must be
sharply divided from the laity. Also we must be free from those ties
which a wife and children involve. I can hardly express the horror with
which I am filled by seeing English priests living in what I can only
designate as 'open matrimony.' It is deplorable. The priest must be
absolutely sexless--if not in practice, yet at any rate in theory,
absolutely--and that too, by a theory so universally accepted that none
shall venture to dispute it."
"But," said Ernest, "has not the Bible already told people what they
ought and ought not to do, and is it not enough for us to insist on what
can be found here, and let the rest alone?"
"If you begin with the Bible," was the rejoinder, "you are three parts
gone on the road to infidelity, and will go the other part before you
know where you are. The Bible is not without its value to us the clergy,
but for the laity it is a stumbling-block which cannot be taken out of
their way too soon or too completely. Of course, I mean on the
supposition that they read it, which, happily, they seldom do. If people
read the Bible as the ordinary British churchman or churchwoman reads it,
it is harmless enough; but if they read it with any care--which we should
assume they will if we give it them at all--it is fatal to them.
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