I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE 489

with the Puritan dogmata which forbid thinking at all, in a séance to which I was invited, shyly, by my friend Macdonald,¹ -fashionable séance of Evangelical doctrine, at the Earl of Ducie’s; presided over by Mr. Molyneux, then a divine of celebrity in that sect; who sate with one leg over his other knee in the attitude always given to Herod at the massacre of the Innocents in mediæval sculpture; and discoursed in tones of consummate assurance and satisfaction, and to the entire comfort and consent of his Belgravian audience, on the beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son. Which, or how many, of his hearers he meant to describe as having personally lived on husks, and devoured their fathers’ property, did not of course appear; but that something of the sort was necessary to the completeness of the joy in heaven² over them, now in Belgrave Square, at the feet-or one foot -of Mr. Molyneux, could not be questioned.

Waiting my time, till the raptures of the converted company had begun to flag a little, I ventured, from a back seat, to inquire of Mr. Molyneux what we were to learn from the example of the other son, not prodigal, who was, his father said of him, “ever with me, and all that I have, thine”?³ A sudden horror, and unanimous feeling of the serpent having, somehow, got over the wall into their Garden of Eden, fell on the whole company; and some of them, I thought, looked at the candles, as if they expected them to burn blue. After a pause of a minute, gathering himself into an expression of pity and indulgence, withholding latent thunder, Mr. Molyneux explained to me that the home-staying son was merely a picturesque figure introduced to fill the background of the parable agreeably, and contained no instruction or example for the well-disposed scriptural student, but, on the contrary, rather a snare for the unwary, and a temptation to self-righteousness,-which was, of all sins, the most offensive to God.

¹ [See above, p. 423.]

² [See Luke xv. 7, 10, 16, 30.]

³ [Luke xv. 31.]

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