And yet every Church produces beautiful souls, though it may
be debated whether "produces" or "contains" is the truthful
word. We have but to fall back upon our own personal
experience if we have lived long and mixed much with our fellow-
men. I have myself lived during the seven most impressionable
years of my life among Jesuits, the most maligned of all
ecclesiastical orders, and I have found them honourable and good
men, in all ways estimable outside the narrowness which limits
the world to Mother Church. They were athletes, scholars, and
gentlemen, nor can I ever remember any examples of that casuistry
with which they are reproached. Some of my best friends have
been among the parochial clergy of the Church of England, men of
sweet and saintly character, whose pecuniary straits were often a
scandal and a reproach to the half-hearted folk who accepted
their spiritual guidance. I have known, also, splendid men among
the Nonconformist clergy, who have often been the champions of
liberty, though their views upon that subject have sometimes
seemed to contract when one ventured upon their own domain of
thought. Each creed has brought out men who were an honour to
the human race, and Manning or Shrewsbury, Gordon or
Dolling, Booth or Stopford Brooke, are all equally admirable,
however diverse the roots from which they grow. Among the great
mass of the people, too, there are very many thousands of
beautiful souls who have been brought up on the old-fashioned
lines, and who never heard of spiritual communion or any other of
those matters which have been discussed in these essays, and yet
have reached a condition of pure spirituality such as all of us
may envy.
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