“I think myself, sir,” said the pastor, deliberately, “that many children are born thus, but how does this evil affect the other form of licentiousness, which is so on the increase?”

“It is very closely allied to it.  Let married parties see that they give birth to pure, harmonious children, and the ‘social evil’ is blotted out forever.  The evil of our life to-day is traceable to offspring, born of false and foolish mothers-of wild and reckless fathers.”

“It’s a great evil, I own, but how can we avert it?”

“By making our marriages pure and holy, and by changing our relations after the life of each is exhausted.”

“But what would become of the children?”

“That is another question, and one which would settle itself.  The order of all life is by steps; these we cannot overleap.  One truth enfolds another.  If the marriage system was perfect, or the relation between the sexes understood, we should not see, as we now do, manifestations which force us continually to question the existence of a God, and to be ever in search of the disturbing cause.  Something is needed, sir, in our present social system to make us pure, and that something, is less restraint, and more personal freedom.  We never become pure under restraint.  All who know me, know that I seek to bring the sexes into pure and holy communion of spirit.  Walls and partitions have ever produced clandestine movements.  Boys and girls in schools should not be separated, but should meet each other daily; their studies, their sports be one as far as possible, thus blending their natures, not hividing them.  If men lived more in the society of women they would be astonished to find how much purer and higher-toned their nature would become; how the mental assimilation was refining their wilder dispositions, their grosser passions.  If such was your experience, you would tell me in one year that men and women do not mingle enough.”

“I think you mean well,” said the pastor, “and if I had your faith in personal freedom, I should almost dare to hope the earth might see better days.”

“I wish you had my trust in man, and the God-life which is within him, waiting to be out-wrought through his deeds.  But my faith cannot be transmitted to another; it is a matter of inward growth with each.  It comes to us when our souls soar above the labarynthian forest of opinions and theories, high into the clearer atmosphere, untainted by the dust and smoke of our daily lives.  Yes; on the mount must the vision ever come.  We must ascend, if we would look beyond; but no words of ours can portray to another the glory of the scenes we there behold.”

Hugh paused, and his face seemed glowing with light.  The pastor went home to think over the words and thoughts of an earnest soul-words which sank deep within him, and displaced many of his own opinions.

“I do believe Hugh Wyman is a good man, after all that is said of him,” he remarked to his wife as he opened his Bible that night for the closing service of the day.