I thought my young friend’s attitude was a little too much like that of the Muggletonians.  I also remarked a singular timidity on his part lest somebody should “unsettle” somebody’s faith,—­as if faith did not require exercise as much as any other living thing, and were not all the better for a shaking up now and then.  I don’t mean that it would be fair to bother Bridget, the wild Irish girl, or Joice Heth, the centenarian, or any other intellectual non-combatant; but all persons who proclaim a belief which passes judgment on their neighbors must be ready to have it “unsettled,” that is, questioned, at all times and by anybody,—­just as those who set up bars across a thoroughfare must expect to have them taken down by every one who wants to pass, if he is strong enough.

Besides, to think of trying to water-proof the American mind against the questions that Heaven rains down upon it shows a misapprehension of our new conditions.  If to question everything be unlawful and dangerous, we had better undeclare our independence at once; for what the Declaration means is the right to question everything, even the truth of its own fundamental proposition.

The old-world order of things is an arrangement of locks and canals, where everything depends on keeping the gates shut, and so holding the upper waters at their level; but the system under which the young republican American is born trusts the whole unimpeded tide of life to the great elemental influences, as the vast rivers of the continent settle their own level in obedience to the laws that govern the planet and the spheres that surround it.

The divinity-student was not quite up to the idea of the commonwealth, as our young friend the Marylander, for instance, understood it.  He could not get rid of that notion of private property in truth, with the right to fence it in, and put up a sign-board, thus: 

               Alltrespassers are warned off these
                              grounds!

He took the young Marylander to task for going to the Church of the Galileans, where he had several times accompanied Iris of late.

I am a Churchman,—­the young man said,—­by education and habit.  I love my old Church for many reasons, but most of all because I think it has educated me out of its own forms into the spirit of its highest teachings.  I think I belong to the “Broad Church,” if any of you can tell what that means.

I had the rashness to attempt to answer the question myself.—­Some say the Broad Church means the collective mass of good people of all denominations.  Others say that such a definition is nonsense; that a church is an organization, and the scattered good folks are no organization at all.  They think that men will eventually come together on the basis of one or two or more common articles of belief, and form a great unity.  Do they see what this amounts