When Ernest came down to Battersby in June, he imprudently tried to open up a more unreserved communication with his father than was his wont.  The first of Ernest’s snipe-like flights on being flushed by Mr Hawke’s sermon was in the direction of ultra-evangelicalism.  Theobald himself had been much more Low than High Church.  This was the normal development of the country clergyman during the first years of his clerical life, between, we will say, the years 1825 to 1850; but he was not prepared for the almost contempt with which Ernest now regarded the doctrines of baptismal regeneration and priestly absolution (Hoity toity, indeed, what business had he with such questions?), nor for his desire to find some means of reconciling Methodism and the Church.  Theobald hated the Church of Rome, but he hated dissenters too, for he found them as a general rule troublesome people to deal with; he always found people who did not agree with him troublesome to deal with:  besides, they set up for knowing as much as he did; nevertheless if he had been let alone he would have leaned towards them rather than towards the High Church party.  The neighbouring clergy, however, would not let him alone.  One by one they had come under the influence, directly or indirectly, of the Oxford movement which had begun twenty years earlier.  It was surprising how many practices he now tolerated which in his youth he would have considered Popish; he knew very well therefore which way things were going in Church matters, and saw that as usual Ernest was setting himself the other way.  The opportunity for telling his son that he was a fool was too favourable not to be embraced, and Theobald was not slow to embrace it.  Ernest was annoyed and surprised, for had not his father and mother been wanting him to be more religious all his life?  Now that he had become so they were still not satisfied.  He said to himself that a prophet was not without honour save in his own country, but he had been lately—­or rather until lately—­getting into an odious habit of turning proverbs upside down, and it occurred to him that a country is sometimes not without honour save for its own prophet.  Then he laughed, and for the rest of the day felt more as he used to feel before he had heard Mr Hawke’s sermon.

He returned to Cambridge for the Long Vacation of 1858—­none too soon, for he had to go in for the Voluntary Theological Examination, which bishops were now beginning to insist upon.  He imagined all the time he was reading that he was storing himself with the knowledge that would best fit him for the work he had taken in hand.  In truth, he was cramming for a pass.  In due time he did pass—­creditably, and was ordained Deacon with half-a-dozen others of his friends in the autumn of 1858.  He was then just twenty-three years old.

CHAPTER LI