“And now what has happened?  The new philosophies have restored your second Authority, and your first, as you properly say, is replaced by the conception of Personality.  Personality is nothing but the rehabilitation of the prophet, the seer.  Get him, as Hatch says, back into your Church.  The priests with their sacrifices and automatic rites, the logicians, have crowded him out.  Why do we read the Old Testament at all?  Not for the laws of the Levites, not for the battles and hangings, but for the inspiration of the prophets.  The authority of the prophet comes through personality, the source of which is in what Myers calls the infinite spiritual world—­in God.  It was Christ’s own authority.

“And as for your other authority, your ordinary man, when he reads modern philosophy, says to himself, this does not conflict with science?  But he gets no hint, when he goes to most churches, that there is, between the two, no real quarrel, and he turns away in despair.  He may accept the pragmatism of James, the idealism of Royce, or even what is called neo realism.  In any case, he gains the conviction that a force for good is at worn in the world, and he has the incentive to become part of it.....  But I have given you a sermon!”

“For which I can never be sufficiently, grateful,” said Hodder, with an earnestness not to be mistaken.

The little man’s eyes rested admiringly, and not without emotion, on the salient features of the tall clergyman.  And when he spoke again, it was in acknowledgment of the fact that he had read Hodder’s purpose.

“You will have opposition, my friend.  They will fight you—­some persons we know.  They do not wish—­what you and I desire.  But you will not surrender—­I knew it.”  Mr. Engel broke off abruptly, and rang a bell on his desk.  “I will make out for you a list.  I hope you may come in again, often.  We shall have other talks,—­yes?  I am always here.”

Then it came to pass that Hodder carried back with him another armful of books.  Those he had brought back were the Levellers of the False.  These were the Builders of the True.

II

Hodder had known for many years that the writings of Josiah Royce and of William James had “been in the air,” so to speak, and he had heard them mentioned at dinner parties by his more intellectual parishioners, such as Mrs. Constable and Martha Preston.  Now he was able to smile at his former attitude toward these moderns, whose perusal he had deprecated as treason to the saints!  And he remembered his horror on having listened to a fellow-clergyman discuss with calmness the plan of the “Varieties of Religious Experiences.”  A sacrilegious dissection of the lives of these very saints!  The scientific process, the theories of modern psychology applied with sang-froid to the workings of God in the human soul!  Science he had regarded as the proclaimed enemy of religion, and in these days of the apotheosis of science not even sacred things were spared.