Day after day went by, and what was he doing?
Standing on professional _etiquette_, and praying that his shares might
go up and down as he wanted them, so that they might give him money
enough to enable him to regenerate the universe. But in the meantime the
people were dying. How many souls would not be doomed to endless ages of
the most frightful torments that the mind could think of, before he could
bring his spiritual pathology engine to bear upon them? Why might he not
stand and preach as he saw the Dissenters doing sometimes in Lincoln's
Inn Fields and other thoroughfares? He could say all that Mr Hawke had
said. Mr Hawke was a very poor creature in Ernest's eyes now, for he was
a Low Churchman, but we should not be above learning from any one, and
surely he could affect his hearers as powerfully as Mr Hawke had affected
him if he only had the courage to set to work. The people whom he saw
preaching in the squares sometimes drew large audiences. He could at any
rate preach better than they.
Ernest broached this to Pryer, who treated it as something too outrageous
to be even thought of. Nothing, he said, could more tend to lower the
dignity of the clergy and bring the Church into contempt.
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