“I don’t pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic,” said Lydgate. “His position is not quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better. Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now, is an impatience of everything in which the parson doesn’t cut the principal figure. I see something of that in Mr. Tyke at the Hospital: a good deal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard to make people uncomfortably aware of him. Besides, an apostolic man at Lowick!⁠—he ought to think, as St. Francis did, that it is needful to preach to the birds.”