of this unlicked wolf-cub muffled in the fleece, and mimicking the bleat of a guileless lamb. Portions of it reminded me of certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts I had once read when a child; they were flavoured with about the same seasoning of excitation to fanaticism. * * * I smiled then over this dose of maternal tenderness, coming from the ruddy old lady of the Seven Hills; smiled, too, at my own disinclination, not to say disability, to meet their melting favours."
As her reason is not swayed by the arguments of the
"Moloch Church," neither is her fancy kindled by its ritual:[1]
"Neither full procession nor high mass, nor swarming tapers,
nor swinging censers, nor ecclesiastical millinery, nor celestial
jewelry, touched my imagination a whit. What I saw struck
me as tawdry, not grand; as grossly material, not poetically
spiritual."
Kingsley widens his criticism from the personal to the
social point of view. He objects to luxury not so much
because it shows up the luxurious as because it takes away
even the necessities from those who have not, to add yet
more luxuries to those that have. He questions—[2]
"* * * how a really pious and universally respected archbishop,
living within a quarter of a mile of one of the worst infernos
of destitution, disease, filth, and profligacy—can yet find
it in his heart to save £120,000 out of church revenues, and leave
it to his family; * * * how Irish bishops can reconcile it
to their consciences to leave behind them, one and all, large fortunes
- * * taken from the pockets of a Roman Catholic
population, whom they have been put there to convert to Protestantism for the last three hundred years—with what success, all the world knows."
