or downright
opponents of it. I am not willing to believe that God meant men like
these to perish--I don't like to think of Emerson being lost, or Huxley,
or Spencer, or even Darwin--Question: has the Church power to save the
educated?"

"Sure, I know one that has never lacked it," purled Father Riley.

"There's an answer to you in Linford's letter," added Whittaker.

"Gentlemen, you jest with me--but I shall continue to feel grateful to
our slightly dogmatic young friend for his artless brutalities. Now I
know what the business man keeps to himself when I ask him why he has
lost interest in the church."

"There's a large class we can't take from you," said Father Riley--"that
class with whom religion is a mode of respectability."

"And you can't take our higher critics, either--more's the pity!"

"On my word, now, gentlemen," returned the Catholic, again, "that was a
dear, blasphemous young whelp! You know, I rather liked him. Bless the
soul of you, I could as little have rebuked the lad as I could punish
the guiltless indecence of a babe--he was that shockingly naif!"

"He is undoubtedly the just fruit of our own toleration," repeated the
high-church rector.

"And he stands for our knottiest problem," said the Presbyterian.

"A problem all the knottier, I suspect," began Whittaker--

"Didn't I _tell_ you?" interrupted Father Riley. "Oh, the outrageous
cynic! Be braced for him, now!"

"I was only going to suggest," resumed the wicked Unitarian, calmly,
"that those people, Linford and his brother--and even that singularly
effective Mrs. Linford, with her inferable views about divorce--you know
I dare say that they--really you know--that they possess the courage
of--"

"Their _convictions_!" concluded little Floud, impatient alike of the
speaker's hesitation and the expected platitude.

"No--I was about to say--the courage--of ours."

A few looked politely blank at this unseasonable flippancy. Father Riley
smiled with rare sweetness and murmured, "So cynical, even for a
Unitarian!" as if to himself in playful confidence.

But the amiable Presbyterian, of the cheerful auburn beard and the
salient nose, hereupon led them tactfully to safe ground in a discussion
of the ethnic Trinities.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEEKER***

******* This file should be named 15797.txt or 15797.zip *******

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org