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Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902

"The Way of All Flesh"

"
When Ernest came to London he intended doing a good deal of
house-to-house visiting, but Pryer had talked him out of this even before
he settled down in his new and strangely-chosen apartments. The line he
now took was that if people wanted Christ, they must prove their want by
taking some little trouble, and the trouble required of them was that
they should come and seek him, Ernest, out; there he was in the midst of
them ready to teach; if people did not choose to come to him it was no
fault of his.
"My great business here," he writes again to Dawson, "is to observe. I
am not doing much in parish work beyond my share of the daily services. I
have a man's Bible Class, and a boy's Bible Class, and a good many young
men and boys to whom I give instruction one way or another; then there
are the Sunday School children, with whom I fill my room on a Sunday
evening as full as it will hold, and let them sing hymns and chants. They
like this. I do a great deal of reading--chiefly of books which Pryer
and I think most likely to help; we find nothing comparable to the
Jesuits. Pryer is a thorough gentleman, and an admirable man of
business--no less observant of the things of this world, in fact, than of
the things above; by a brilliant coup he has retrieved, or nearly so, a
rather serious loss which threatened to delay indefinitely the execution
of our great scheme.


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