“I don’t think that, Phyllis.  What I think is, that if you had ever loved me you would be ready to stand by my side now—­to be guided by me in a matter which I have made the study of my life.”

“In such matters as these—­the value or the worthlessness of the Bible; the value or the worthlessness of the Church—­I require no guide, Mr. Holland.  I do not need to go to a priest to ask if it is wrong to steal, to covet another’s goods, to honor my father——­Oh, I cannot discuss what is so very obvious.  The Bible I regard as precious; you think that you are in a position to edit it as if it were an ordinary book.  The Church I regard as the Temple of God upon the earth; you think that it exists only to be sneered at? and yet you talk of fanciful barriers between us!”

“I consider it the greatest privilege of a man on earth to be a minister of the Church of Christ.”

“Why, then, do you take every opportunity of pointing to it as the greatest enemy to Christianity?”

“The Church of to-day represents some results of the great Reformation.  That Reformation was due to the intelligence of those men who perceived that it had become the enemy to freedom; the enemy to the development of thought; the enemy to the aspirations of a great nation.  The nation rejoiced in the freedom of thought of which the great charter was the Reformation.  But during the hundreds of years that have elapsed since that Reformation, some enormous changes have been brought about in the daily life of the people of this great nation.  The people are being educated, and the Church must sooner or later face the fact that as education spreads church-going decreases.  Why is that, I ask you?”

“Because men are growing more wicked every day.”

“But they are not.  Crime is steadily decreasing as education is spreading, and yet people will not go to church.  They will go to lectures, to bands of music, to political demonstrations, but they will not go to church.  The reason they will not go is because they know that they will hear within the church the arguments of men whose minds are stunted by a narrow theological course against every discovery of science or result of investigation.  You know how the best minds in the Church ridiculed the discoveries of geology, of biology, ending, of course, by reluctantly accepting the teachings of the men whom they reviled.”

“You said all that in your paper, Mr. Holland, and yet I tell you that I abhor your paper—­that I shuddered when I read what you wrote about the Bible.  The words that are in the Bible have given to millions of poor souls a consolation that science could never bring to them.”

“And those consoling words are what I would read to the people every day of the week, not the words which may have a certain historical signification, but which breathe a very different spirit from the spirit of Christianity.  Phyllis, it is to be the aim of my life to help on the great work of making the Church once more the Church of the people—­of making it in reality the exponent of Christianity and Judaism.  That is my aim, and I want you to be my helper in this work.”