Tess of the dUrbervilles

Mr Clare winced as if he had been struck. He went home pale and

dejected, and called Angel into his study. "Look into this book, my boy," he said. "What do you know about it?"

"I ordered it," said Angel simply. "What for?"

"To read."

"How can you think of reading it?"

"How can I? Why--it is a system of philosophy. There is no more

moral, or even religious, work published."

"Yes--moral enough; I don't deny that. But religious!--and for YOU,

who intend to be a minister of the Gospel!"

"Since you have alluded to the matter, father," said the son, with

anxious thought upon his face, "I should like to say, once for

all, that I should prefer not to take Orders. I fear I could not

conscientiously do so. I love the Church as one loves a parent.

I shall always have the warmest affection for her. There is no

institution for whose history I have a deeper admiration; but I

cannot honestly be ordained her minister, as my brothers are, while

she refuses to liberate her mind from an untenable redemptive

theolatry."

It had never occurred to the straightforward and simple-minded Vicar

that one of his own flesh and blood could come to this! He was

stultified, shocked, paralysed. And if Angel were not going to

enter the Church, what was the use of sending him to Cambridge? The

University as a step to anything but ordination seemed, to this man

of fixed ideas, a preface without a volume. He was a man not merely

religious, but devout; a firm believer--not as the phrase is now

elusively construed by theological thimble-riggers in the Church and

out of it, but in the old and ardent sense of the Evangelical school:

one who could Indeed opine

That the Eternal and Divine

Did, eighteen centuries ago

In very truth...

Angel's father tried argument, persuasion, entreaty.

"No, father; I cannot underwrite Article Four (leave alone the rest),

taking it 'in the literal and grammatical sense' as required by the

Declaration; and, therefore, I can't be a parson in the present state

of affairs," said Angel. "My whole instinct in matters of religion

is towards reconstruction; to quote your favorite Epistle to the

Hebrews, 'the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things

that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.'"

His father grieved so deeply that it made Angel quite ill to see him.

"What is the good of your mother and me economizing and stinting

ourselves to give you a University education, if it is not to be used

for the honour and glory of God?" his father repeated.