“Democracy’s an adventure,” he replied, “the great adventure of mankind.  I think the trouble in many minds lies in the fact that they persist in regarding it as something to be made safe.  All that can be done is to try to make it as safe as possible.  But no adventure is safe—­life itself is an adventure, and neither is that safe.  It’s a hazard, as you and I have found out.  The moment we try to make life safe we lose all there is in it worth while.”

I thought a moment.

“Yes, that’s so,” I agreed.  On the table beside the bed in company with two or three other volumes, lay a Bible.  He seemed to notice that my eye fell upon it.

“Do you remember the story of the Prodigal Son?” he asked.  “Well, that’s the parable of democracy, of self-government in the individual and in society.  In order to arrive at salvation, Paret, most of us have to take our journey into a far country.”

“A far country!” I exclaimed.  The words struck a reminiscent chord.

“We have to leave what seem the safe things, we have to wander and suffer in order to realize that the only true safety lies in development.  We have first to cast off the leading strings of authority.  It’s a delusion that we can insure ourselves by remaining within its walls—­we have to risk our lives and our souls.  It is discouraging when we look around us to-day, and in a way the pessimists are right when they say we don’t see democracy.  We see only what may be called the first stage of it; for democracy is still in a far country eating the husks of individualism, materialism.  What we see is not true freedom, but freedom run to riot, men struggling for themselves, spending on themselves the fruits of their inheritance; we see a government intent on one object alone—­exploitation of this inheritance in order to achieve what it calls prosperity.  And God is far away.”

“And—­we shall turn?” I asked.

“We shall turn or perish.  I believe that we shall turn.”  He fixed his eyes on my face.  “What is it,” he asked, “that brought you here to me, to-day?”

I was silent.

“The motive, Paret—­the motive that sends us all wandering into is divine, is inherited from God himself.  And the same motive, after our eyes shall have been opened, after we shall have seen and known the tragedy and misery of life, after we shall have made the mistakes and committed the sins and experienced the emptiness—­the same motive will lead us back again.  That, too, is an adventure, the greatest adventure of all.  Because, when we go back we shall not find the same God—­or rather we shall recognize him in ourselves.  Autonomy is godliness, knowledge is godliness.  We went away cringing, superstitious, we saw everywhere omens and evidences of his wrath in the earth and sea and sky, we burned candles and sacrificed animals in the vain hope of averting scourges and other calamities.  But when we come back it will be with a knowledge of his ways, gained at a price,—­the price he, too, must have paid—­and we shall be able to stand up and look him in the face, and all our childish superstitions and optimisms shall have been burned away.”