I’ve been thrown all my life with people who had rich ideas and violent beliefs and passionate sympathies and deplorable hatreds, so that when I come into contact with what I am bound to accept as the typical English parson in the making I am really appalled.

I’ve been wondering why the Bishop of Silchester told me to come here.  Did he really think that the spectacle of moderation in the moulding was good for me?  Did he fancy that I was a young zealot who required putting in his place?  Or did he more subtly realize from the account I gave him of Malford that I was in danger of becoming moderate, even luke-warm, even tepid, perhaps even stone-cold?  Did he grasp that I must owe something to party as well as mankind, if I was to give up anything worth giving to mankind?  But perhaps in my egoism I am attributing much more to his lordship’s paternal interest, a keener glance to his episcopal eye, than I have any right to attribute.  Perhaps, after all, he merely saw in me a young man who had missed the advantages of Oxford, etc., and wished out of regard for my future to provide me with the best substitute.

Anyway, please don’t think that I live in a constant state of criticism with a correspondingly dangerous increase of self-esteem.  I really am working hard.  I sometimes wonder if the preparation of a “good” theological college is the best preparation for the priesthood.  But so long as bishops demand the knowledge they do, it is obvious that this form of preparation will continue.  There again though, I daresay if I imagined myself an inspired pianist I should grumble at the amount of scales I was set to practice.  I’m not, once I’ve written down or talked out some of my folly, so very foolish at bottom.

Beyond a slight inclination to flirt with the opinions of most of the great heresiarchs in turn, but only with each one until the next comes along, I’m not having any intellectual adventures.  One of the excitements I had imagined beforehand was wrestling with Doubt.  But I have no wrestles.  Shall I always be spared?

     Your ever affectionate,

     Mark.

Gradually, as the months went by, either because the students became more mellow in such surroundings or because he himself was achieving a wider tolerance, Mark lost much of his capacity for criticism and learned to recognize in his fellows a simple goodness and sincerity of purpose that almost frightened him when he thought of that great world outside, in the confusion and complexity of which they had pledged themselves to lead souls up to God.  He felt how much they missed by not relying rather upon the Sacraments than upon personal holiness and the upright conduct of the individual.  They were obsessed with the need of setting a good example and of being able from the pulpit to direct the wandering lamb to the Good Shepherd.  Mark scarcely ever argued about his point of view, because