"Wells, H G - Soul Of A Bishop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

who do. They think that the Atheist and Agnostic really believe
but are impelled by a mysterious obstinacy to deny. So it had
been with the Bishop of Princhester; not of cunning or design but
in simple good faith he had accepted all the inherited assurances
of his native rectory, and held by Church, Crown, Empire,
decorum, respectability, solvency--and compulsory Greek at the
Little Go--as his father had done before him. If in his
undergraduate days he had said a thing or two in the modern vein,
affected the socialism of William Morris and learnt some
Swinburne by heart, it was out of a conscious wildness. He did
not wish to be a prig. He had taken a far more genuine interest
in the artistry of ritual.

Through all the time of his incumbency of the church of the
Holy Innocents, St. John's Wood, and of his career as the bishop
suffragan of Pinner, he had never faltered from his profound
confidence in those standards of his home. He had been kind,
popular, and endlessly active. His undergraduate socialism had
expanded simply and sincerely into a theory of administrative
philanthropy. He knew the Webbs. He was as successful with
working-class audiences as with fashionable congregations. His
home life with Lady Ella (she was the daughter of the fifth Earl
of Birkenholme) and his five little girls was simple, beautiful,
and happy as few homes are in these days of confusion. Until he
became Bishop of Princhester--he followed Hood, the first
bishop, as the reign of his Majesty King Edward the Peacemaker
drew to its close--no anticipation of his coming distress fell
across his path.

(2)


He came to Princhester an innocent and trustful man. The home
life at the old rectory of Otteringham was still his standard of
truth and reality. London had not disillusioned him. It was a
strange waste of people, it made him feel like a missionary in
infidel parts, but it was a kindly waste. It was neither
antagonistic nor malicious. He had always felt there that if he
searched his Londoner to the bottom, he would find the completest
recognition of the old rectory and all its data and implications.

But Princhester was different.

Princhester made one think that recently there had been a
second and much more serious Fall.

Princhester was industrial and unashamed. It was a countryside
savagely invaded by forges and mine shafts and gaunt black
things. It was scarred and impeded and discoloured. Even before
that invasion, when the heather was not in flower it must have