your eloquence? It is applause--yes--you seek? You want _your_
church--or the _people's_ church ... what?"

"I'm afraid I don't quite...."

"You must understand," said Weis bluntly.

"It's quite essential. You wish to free yourself from dogmatic vestries.
Very well--will you substitute for dogmatic vestries, your dogmatic
self--yes?" And, when Imrie looked a little crestfallen, he added with a
smile, "We're _all_ dogmatic, my young friend. To all of us freedom is
the right to rule others."

"What is the alternative?"

"There is a plan--I've thought of it often. You want to avoid a
bureaucratic Church. You must not founder in the Charybdis of an
autocratic one. You have means of your own?"

Imrie nodded.

"That's excellent--for you. But do not finance the church on your money.
It must be self-supporting. And don't have 'patrons.' You'll soon have
another vestry."

"But the control?"

"Trustees. Build a democratic church. Let the congregation elect the
trustees. Let the regular attendants vote. Give out tickets at each
meeting and redeem three--five--a dozen, as you determine, for a ballot.
Then let your trustees choose the speakers. You may be the chief
servant. You must not be master. You may preach occasionally--there must
be many--all types--even Jews. To live, it must be free. You must seek
men with messages. Anarchists, devils, Catholics, free-masons,
republicans, single-taxers, socialists, aristocrats. As Milton put it,
you must let truth battle in a free and open encounter. Then you will
have something big, vital, valuable. Is it not so?"

He paused for breath, and Imrie sat silent in amazement at the
enthusiasm, the breadth of vision, the fertile ingenuity of the little
man. Then the self-consciousness which had shackled him hitherto in the
interview, fell away, and he took up the thread where Weis had
momentarily laid it down.

Gradually, as proposals were made and rejected and remade, with not a
little healthy acrimony, and a very great deal of humour on the part of
the older man, which Imrie needed most of all, the idea took shape.

"Ho--yes," cried Weis, as a crushing echo to one of Imrie's most
rhetorical flights. "That is fine--yes. Fine words--yes. But
words--pouf--what are they? You are young--you wish to reform the world.
That is excellent--ambition--yes. But no more. If you succeed beyond
your dreams, you will do little, very little. Hitch your wagon to a
star--yes. But don't try to ride