Such was the present state of mind of the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather, when his clerical brother called upon him to talk over the questions to which old Sophy had called his attention.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE REVEREND DOCTOR CALLS ON BROTHER FAIRWEATHER.

For the last few months, while all these various matters were going on in Rockland, the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had been busy with the records of ancient councils and the writings of the early fathers.  The more he read, the more discontented he became with the platform upon which he and his people were standing.  They and he were clearly in a minority, and his deep inward longing to be with the majority was growing into an engrossing passion.  He yearned especially towards the good old unquestioning, authoritative Mother Church, with her articles of faith which took away the necessity for private judgment, with her traditional forms and ceremonies, and her whole apparatus of stimulants and anodynes.

About this time he procured a breviary and kept it in his desk under the loose papers.  He sent to a Catholic bookstore and obtained a small crucifix suspended from a string of beads.  He ordered his new coat to be cut very narrow in the collar and to be made single-breasted.  He began an informal series of religious conversations with Miss O’Brien, the young person of Irish extraction already referred to as Bridget, maid of all work.  These not proving very satisfactory, he managed to fall in with Father McShane, the Catholic priest of the Rockland church.  Father McShane encouraged his nibble very scientifically.  It would be such a fine thing to bring over one of those Protestant heretics, and a “liberal” one too!—­not that there was any real difference between them, but it sounded better to say that one of these rationalizing free-and-equal religionists had been made a convert than any of those half-way Protestants who were the slaves of catechisms instead of councils and of commentators instead of popes.  The subtle priest played his disciple with his finest tackle.  It was hardly necessary:  when anything or anybody wishes to be caught, a bare hook and a coarse line are all that is needed.

If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty, if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him.  And the temptation is to some natures a very great one.  Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man.  It involves that necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded.  In common life we shirk it by forming habits, which take the place of self-determination.  In politics party-organization saves us the pains of much thinking before deciding how to cast our vote.  In religious matters there are great multitudes watching us perpetually, each propagandist ready with his bundle of finalities, which having accepted we may be at peace.  The more absolute the submission demanded, the stronger the temptation becomes to those who have been long tossed among doubts and conflicts.