This I suppose constitutes real virtue, since, in view of certain Bible sayings, the person who is tempted and would like to yield to the temptation, is equally a sinner with the person who does yield.

To be truly good one should be too good to be tempted, or too weak to make the effort worth the tempter's while--in short not deserving of his powder and shot.
I need hardly add that Bastin went into the Church; indeed, he could not have gone anywhere else; it absorbed him naturally, as doubtless Heaven will do in due course.

Only I think it likely that until they get to know him he will bore the angels so much that they will continually move him up higher.

Also if they have any susceptibilities left, probably he will tread upon their toes--an art in which I never knew his equal.
However, I always loved Bastin, perhaps because no one else did, a fact of which he remained totally unconscious, or perhaps because of his brutal way of telling one what he conceived to be the truth, which, as he had less imagination than a dormouse, generally it was not.

For if the truth is a jewel, it is one coloured and veiled by many different lights and atmospheres.
It only remains to add that he was learned in his theological fashion and that among his further peculiarities were the slow, monotonous voice in which he uttered his views in long sentences, and his total indifference to adverse argument however sound and convincing.
My other friend, Bickley, was a person of a quite different character.
Like Bastin, he was learned, but his tendencies faced another way.
If Bastin's omnivorous throat could swallow a camel, especially a theological camel, Bickley's would strain at the smallest gnat, especially a theological gnat.