Ruth was also dealt with incidentally.  She was the woman who expresses her willingness to give up her God at the bidding of another woman, and who had entered into a plot with that same woman to entrap a man whom they looked to support them.

Then there was David.  It was not the Bath-sheba episode, but the Abishag, that the author treated at length—­one of the most revolting transactions in history, especially as there is some reason to believe that the unfortunate girl was, when it was perpetrated, already attached to one of the sons of the loathsome, senile sensualist.

Perhaps, on the whole, it was not surprising that after the publication of this book the Rev. George Holland became the best-known clergyman in England, or that the breath of bishops should be taken from them.  So soon as some of them recovered from the first brunt of the shock, they met together and held up their hands, saying that they awaited the taking of immediate action by the prelate within whose see St. Chad’s was situated.  But that particular prelate was a man who had never been known to err on the side of rapidity of action.  Nearly a week had passed before he made any move in the matter, and then the move he made was in the direction of the Engadine.  He crossed the Channel with the book under his arm.  He determined to read it at his leisure.  Being a clergyman, he could not, of course, be expected to have examined, from any standpoint but that of the clergyman, the characters of the persons dealt with in the book, and he was naturally shocked at the freedom shown by the rector of St. Chad’s in criticising men whose names have been held in the highest esteem for some thousands of years.  He at once perceived that the rector of St. Chad’s had been very narrow-minded in his views regarding the conduct of the men whom he had attacked.  It occurred to him, as it had to Mr. Ayrton, that the writer had drawn his picture without any regard for perspective.  That was very foolish on the part of a man who was a Fellow of his college, the bishop thought; and besides, there was no need for the book—­its tendency was not to help the weaker brethren.  But to assume that the book would, as some newspaper articles said it would, furnish the most powerful argument that had yet been brought forward in favor of the Disestablishment of Church, was, he thought, to assume a great deal too much.  The Church that had survived Wesley, Whitefield, Colenso, Darwin, and Renan would not succumb to George Holland.  The bishop recollected how the Church had bitterly opposed all the teaching of the men of wisdom whose names came back to him; and how it had ended by making their teaching its own.  Would anyone venture to assert that the progress of Christianity was dependent upon what people thought of the acceptance by David of the therapeutic course prescribed for him?  Was the morality which the Church preached likely to be jeopardized because Ruth was a tricky young woman?