“when one thinks what a great centre of learning and faith like oxford ought to be—that its highest educational work should just be the deliverance of us all from flunkeyism and money-worship—and then looks at matters here without rose-colored spectacles, it gives[249] one sometimes a sort of chilly, leaden despondency, which is very hard to struggle against.”

“i am sorry to hear you talk like that, jack, for one can’t help loving the place after all.”

“so i do, god knows. if i didn’t, i shouldn’t care for its shortcomings.”

“well, the flunkeyism and money-worship were bad enough, but i don’t think they were the worst things—at least not in my day. our neglects were almost worse than our worships.”

“you mean the want of all reverence for parents? well, perhaps that lies at the root of the false worships. they spring up on the vacant soil.”

“and the want of reverence for women, jack. the worst of all, to my mind!”

“perhaps you are right. but we are not at the bottom yet.”

“how do you mean?”

“i mean that we must worship god before we can reverence parents or women, or root out flunkeyism and money-worship.”

“yes. but after all can we fairly lay that sin on oxford? surely, whatever may be growing up side by side with it, there’s more christianity here than almost anywhere else.”

“plenty of common-room christianity—belief in a dead god. there, i have never said it to any one but you, but that is the slough we have got to get out of.[250] don’t think that i despair for us. we shall do it yet; but it will be sore work, stripping off the comfortable wine-party religion in which we are wrapped up—work for our strongest and our wisest.”