George Holland may have been disappointed, or he may have been pleased at the inactivity of the bishop.  He made no sign one way or the other.  Of course he was no more than human:  he would have regarded a letter of remonstrance from the bishop as a personal compliment; he had certainly expected such a letter, for he had already put together the heads of the reply he would make—­and publish—­to any official remonstrance that might be offered to him.  Still he made no sign.  He preached at least one sermon every Sunday morning, and whenever it was known that he would preach, St. Chad’s was crowded and the offertory was all that could be desired.  The bishop’s chaplain no longer held a watching brief in regard in regard to those sermons.  He did not think it worth while to do so much, George Holland’s friends said, shaking their heads and pursing out their lips.  Oh, yes! there could be no doubt that the bishop was a very weak sort of man.

But then suddenly there appeared in the new number of the Zeit Geist Review an article above the signature of George Holland, entitled “The Enemy to Christianity,” and in a moment it became pretty plain that George Holland had not in his “Revised Versions,” said the last word that he had to say regarding the attitude of the Church of England in respect of the non-church-goers of the day.  When people read the article they asked “Who is the Enemy to Christianity referred to by the writer?” and they were forced to conclude that the answer which was made to such an inquiry by the article itself was, “The Church.”

He pointed out the infatuation which possessed the heads of the Church of England in expecting to appeal with success to the educated people of the present day, while still declining to move with the course of thought of the people.  Already the braying of a trombone out of tune, and the barbarous jingle of a tambourine, had absorbed some hundred thousand of possible church-goers; and though, of course, it was impossible for sensible men and women—­the people whom the Church should endeavor to grapple to its soul with hooks of steel—­to look, except with amused sadness, at the ludicrous methods and vulgar ineptitude of the Salvation Army, still the Church was making no effort to provide the sensible, thinking, educated people of England with an equivalent as suitable to their requirements as the Salvation Army was to the requirements of the foolish, the hysterical, the unthinking people who played the tambourines and brayed on the tuneless trombones.  Thus it is that one man says to another nowadays, when he has got nothing better to talk about, “Are you a man of intelligence, or do you go to church?”