“But why,” she cried, “do you insist on what you cell authority?  As a modern woman who has learned to use her own mind, I simply can’t believe, if the God of the universe is the moral God you assert him to be, that he has established on earth an agency of the kind you infer, and delegated to it the power of life and death over human souls.  Perhaps you do not go so far, but if you make the claim at all you must make it in its entirety.  There is an idea of commercialism, of monopoly in that conception which is utterly repugnant to any one who tries to approach the subject with a fresh mind, and from an ideal point of view.  And religion must be idealism—­mustn’t it?

“Your ancient monks and saints weren’t satisfied until they had settled every detail of the invisible world, of the past and future.  They mapped it out as if it were a region they had actually explored, like geographers.  They used their reason, and what science they had, to make theories about it which the churches still proclaim as the catholic and final truth.  You forbid us to use our reason.  You declare, in order to become Christians, that we have to accept authoritative statements.  Oh, can’t you see that an authoritative statement is just what an ethical person doesn’t want?  Belief—­faith doesn’t consist in the mere acceptance of a statement, but in something much higher—­if we can achieve it.  Acceptance of authority is not faith, it is mere credulity, it is to shirk the real issue.  We must believe, if we believe at all, without authority.  If we knew, there would be no virtue in striving.  If I choose a God,” she added, after a pause, “I cannot take a consensus of opinion about him,—­he must be my God.”

Hodder did not speak immediately.  Strange as it may seem, he had never heard the argument, and the strength of it, reenforced by the extraordinary vitality and earnestness of the woman who had uttered it, had a momentary stunning effect.  He sat contemplating her as she lay back among the cushions, and suddenly he seemed to see in her the rebellious child of which her father had spoken.  No wonder Eldon Parr had misunderstood her, had sought to crush her spirit!  She was to be dealt with in no common way, nor was the consuming yearning he discerned in her to be lightly satisfied.

“The God of the individualist,” he said at length—­musingly, not accusingly.

“I am an individualist,” she admitted simply.  “But I am at least logical in that philosophy, and the individualists who attend the churches to-day are not.  The inconsistency of their lives is what makes those of us who do not go to church doubt the efficacy of their creed, which seems to have no power to change them.  The majority of people in St. John’s are no more Christians than I am.  They attend service once a week, and the rest of the time they are bent upon getting all they can of pleasure and profit for themselves.  Do you wonder that those who consider this spectacle come inevitably to the conclusion that either Christianity is at fault, is outworn, or else that it is presented in the wrong way?”