“That’s it, Mr. Linford—­tell us that—­we need to know that—­do we not, gentlemen?”

“Speak for yourself, Whittaker,” snapped the aggressive little Baptist, “but doubtless Mr. Linford has something to say.”

Bernal remained unperturbed by this.  Very earnestly he continued:  “Christianity is defective, judged even by poor human standards; untrue by the plain facts of human consciousness.”

“Ah!  Now we shall learn!” Father Riley turned his most gracious smile upon the speaker.

“Your churches are losing their hold upon men because your religion is one of separation, here and hereafter—­while the one great tendency of the age is toward brotherhood—­oneness.  Primitive man had individual pride—­family pride, city pride, state pride, national pride followed—­but we are coming now to the only permissible pride, a world pride—­in which the race feels its oneness.  We are nearly there; even now the spirit that denies this actual brotherhood is confined to the churches.  The people outside more generally than you dream know that God does not discriminate among religions—­that he has a scheme of a dignity so true that it can no more permit the loss of one black devil-worshipper than that of the most magnificent of archbishops.”

He stopped, looking inquiringly—­almost wistfully, at them.

Various polite exclamations assured him of their interest.

“Continue, by all means,” urged Whittaker.  “I feel that you will have even Father Riley edified in a moment.”

“The most cynical chap—­even for a Unitarian,” purled that good man.

Bernal resumed.

“Your God is a tribal God who performed his wonders to show that he had set a difference between Israel and Egypt.  Your Saviour continues to set the same difference:  Israel being those who believed his claim to Godship; Egypt those who find his evidence insufficient.  But we humans daily practise better than this preaching of retaliation.  The Church is losing power because your creeds are fixed while man, never ceasing to grow, has inevitably gone beyond them—­even beyond the teachings of your Saviour who threatened to separate father from son and mother from daughter—­who would distinguish sheep from goats by the mere intellectual test of the opinion they formed of his miracles.  The world to-day insists on moral tests—­which Christianity has never done.”

“Ah—­now we are getting at it,” remarked the Methodist, whose twinkling eyes curiously belied his grimly solemn face.  “Who was it that wished to know the belief of the average unbeliever?”

“The average unbeliever,” answered Bernal promptly, “no longer feels the need of a Saviour—­he knows that he must save himself.  He no longer believes in the God who failed always, from Eden to Calvary, failed even to save his chosen tribe by that last device of begetting a son of a human mother who should be sacrificed to him.  He no longer believes that he must have a mediator between himself and that God.”