“They will not do it,” said George quietly to my father, “and I am glad of it.”

He was right.  “This,” said Dr. Downie, “is a counsel of perfection.  Things have gone too far, and we are flesh and blood.  What would those who in your country come nearest to us Musical Bank Managers do, if they found they had made such a mistake as we have, and dared not own it?”

“Do not ask me,” said my father; “the story is too long, and too terrible.”

“At any rate, then, tell us what you would have us do that is within our reach.”

“I have done you harm enough, and if I preach, as likely as not I shall do more.”

Seeing, however, that Dr. Downie was anxious to hear what he thought, my father said—­

“Then I must tell you.  Our religion sets before us an ideal which we all cordially accept, but it also tells us of marvels like your chariot and horses, which we most of us reject.  Our best teachers insist on the ideal, and keep the marvels in the background.  If they could say outright that our age has outgrown them, they would say so, but this they may not do; nevertheless they contrive to let their opinions be sufficiently well known, and their hearers are content with this.

“We have others who take a very different course, but of these I will not speak.  Roughly, then, if you cannot abolish me altogether, make me a peg on which to hang all your own best ethical and spiritual conceptions.  If you will do this, and wriggle out of that wretched relic, with that not less wretched picture—­if you will make me out to be much better and abler than I was, or ever shall be, Sunchildism may serve your turn for many a long year to come.  Otherwise it will tumble about your heads before you think it will.

“Am I to go on or stop?”

“Go on,” said George softly.  That was enough for my father, so on he went.

“You are already doing part of what I wish.  I was delighted with the two passages I heard on Sunday, from what you call the Sunchild’s Sayings.  I never said a word of either passage; I wish I had; I wish I could say anything half so good.  And I have read a pamphlet by President Gurgoyle, which I liked extremely; but I never said what he says I did.  Again, I wish I had.  Keep to this sort of thing, and I will be as good a Sunchildist as any of you.  But you must bribe some thief to steal that relic, and break it up to mend the roads with; and—­for I believe that here as elsewhere fires sometimes get lighted through the carelessness of a workman—­set the most careless workman you can find to do a plumbing job near that picture.”

Hanky looked black at this, and George trod lightly on my father’s toe, but he told me that my father’s face was innocence itself.

“These are hard sayings,” said Dr. Downie.