tle hope of doing so. What is the matter? I hope I
haven't got _you_ into any unpleasantness, Father Baldwin."

"It doesn't very much matter if you have," replied the older priest,
leaning back in his chair and looking at him keenly from under his
thick, iron-grey eyebrows. "You only said what has been in the hearts
and souls of a good many of us for a long time, but it was given to you
to say it and, let us hope, also the inspiration to say it in the proper
way."

"Please God!" said Vane. "And now what have I done; I mean as regards
yourself and St. Chrysostom?"

"To begin with," replied Father Baldwin, "about half the wealthiest
members of the congregation, men and women, but mostly men, have written
to say that if they are to be publicly insulted from the pulpit, and
told that they are liars and hypocrites, and not Christians, save in
name, they will leave the church and withdraw all their
subscriptions--which, of course, from quite a worldly point of view,
would be somewhat a serious matter for the church."

"That simply proves that they are not Christians," said Vane, "and the
church is better without their money. They practically confess that
they never have been giving their money honestly for the service of God,
but merely for self-advertisement or as a social obligation. It would be
no loss to us, and little gain to anybody else they gave it to."

"Yes, I believe you are right," replied Father Baldwin. "It seems rather
a hard thing to say, but people who would leave a church because the
Sermon on the Mount was preached from its pulpit, must be a strange sort
of Christians."

"They are not Christians at all!" exclaimed Vane, with a burst of
righteous wrath, "they are the bane and curse of Christianity, and have
been ever since Constantine made it official and fashionable. They are
responsible for every corruption that has crept into the Church, for
every blot that defiles the purity of the Creed. They are not
Christians, and they never have been, for they cannot be what they are
and followers of Christ at the same time. They and the wealthy clergy of
all the churches are responsible for the unfaith, tacit and avowed, of
what we are pleased to call the lower classes; the classes who compose
the majority of Christ's Congregation; and they are responsible for all
the cynicism of the open and active enemies of our faith. It is they who
make it possible for the infidel and the atheist to point the finger of
sc