Dr. Argure,:  [(shaking his head).]

—­It is a dangerous doctrine, Mr. Laicus, a dangerous doctrine.  You do not consider its effect on the minds of the common people.

Laicus,:  [(thoroughly aroused and thoroughly in earnest).]

—­Do you consider the influence of the opposite teaching, both on the church and on the individual?  We are building churches, you tell us.  The “outsiders,” as we call them, very soon understand that.  They see that we are on the look-out for men who can build us up, not for men whom we can build up.  If a wealthy man comes into the neighborhood, we angle for him.  If a devout, active, praying Christian moves into the neighborhood, we angle for him.  If a drunken loafer drops down upon us, does anybody ever angle for him?  If a poor, forlorn widow, who has to work from Monday morning till Saturday night, comes to dwell under the shadow of our church, do we angle for her?  Yes!  I am glad to believe we do.  But the shrewdness, the energy, the tact, is displayed in the other kind of fishing.  Don’t you suppose “the world” understand this?  Don’t you suppose our Mr. Wheaton understands what we want him in the board of trustees for?  Such men interpret our invitation—­and they are not very wrong—­as, come with us and do us good; not, come with us and we will do you good.

Consider, too, its effect on the individual.  I attended a morning prayer meeting last winter in the city.  A young man told his experience.  He started in the morning, he said, to go to the store.  But it seemed as though the Lord bid him retrace his steps.  A voice within seemed to say to him, “Your duty is at the prayer meeting.”  The battle between Christ and the world was long and bitter.  Christ at length prevailed.  He had come to the prayer meeting.  He wanted to tell the brethren what Christ had done for his soul.  The experience may have been genuine.  It may have been his duty to leave the store for the church that particular morning.  But what is the effect of a training which teaches a young man to consider all the time he gives to the store as time appropriated to the world?  It is that he can serve both God and mammon; that he actually does.  It draws a sharp line between the sacred and secular.  And most of his life is necessarily the secular.

I forgot to mention that Mrs. Goodsole had come over with her husband.  She and Jennie sat side by side.  But she had not opened her mouth since the salutations of the evening had been interchanged.  She is the meekest and mildest of women.  She is also the most timed.  In public she rarely speaks.  But it is currently reported that she avenges herself for her silence by the curtain lectures, she delivers to her good husband at home.  Of that, however, I cannot be sure.  I speak only of rumor.  Now she took advantage of a pause to say: 

Mrs. Goodsole.: 

—­I like Mr. Laicus’s doctrine.  It’s very comforting to a woman like me who am so busy at home that I can hardly get out to church on Sundays.