The home training in evangelical circles fifty years ago had many serious defects. It was conducted too much with reference to the future world rather than the present one. Had Wentworth been taught the beauty of work—that life was a battlefield in which the victory was to the strong—that man was here to do the best he could for himself, to enjoy the world which the good God had made beautiful—that he was to aim high, to cherish noble expectations, to do manly deeds, to be true and honest and courageous, how different would have been his life! Only the emotional part of him had been developed, and he fell an easy prey when temptation came to him and the voice of passion thundered in his ear and he fell. Why should he not, as he grew tired of sinning and repenting, he asked himself, ignore the past and find peace where peace could never be found? He would eat of the grapes of Sodom and the clusters of Gomorrah. He would sit in the seat of the scorner. There, at any rate, conscience would cease to sting. It was the old story over again. _Facilis descensus Averni_.
Wentworth was beginning to find this out. He had eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, as all must do—though some more than others—and he had found it fairer to the eye than pleasant to the palate. He was getting sick of worldly men and worldly things. There is a cant of the world as well as of the Church, and he had found it out. The cloud passed away, and then came to him a clearer spiritual insight than he had ever possessed before. He had lost the childish faith of his early home, and there came in its stead the grander and fuller one of a man who had put away childish things, who had fought his fears and gathered strength, who had fought his fears and gathered strength, who had found peace and safety, not in the pleasant places, gay with flowers and musical with the song of birds, where we never dream of danger, but in the storm and tempest of the raging sea. Old ideas, modified by hard experience, asserted themselves; old inspirations were revived; old hopes and purposes were brought to life. He would be a preacher—but from the press, rather than from the more cramped and circumscribed pulpit. Temporal things also went better with him. Some of his writings had been republished, and had brought him fame and fortune. In the accomplished actress of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, known as Miss Howard, he had met a sympathetic friend. It was she who had originally raised him from the Slough of Despond, and had recalled him to his better self.