mous changes have been brought about in the
daily life of the people of this great nation. The people are being
educated, and the Church must sooner or later face the fact that as
education spreads church-going decreases. Why is that, I ask you?"

"Because men are growing more wicked every day."

"But they are not. Crime is steadily decreasing as education is
spreading, and yet people will not go to church. They will go to
lectures, to bands of music, to political demonstrations, but they will
not go to church. The reason they will not go is because they know that
they will hear within the church the arguments of men whose minds
are stunted by a narrow theological course against every discovery of
science or result of investigation. You know how the best minds in the
Church ridiculed the discoveries of geology, of biology, ending, of
course, by reluctantly accepting the teachings of the men whom they
reviled."

"You said all that in your paper, Mr. Holland, and yet I tell you that I
abhor your paper--that I shuddered when I read what you wrote about the
Bible. The words that are in the Bible have given to millions of poor
souls a consolation that science could never bring to them."

"And those consoling words are what I would read to the people every
day of the week, not the words which may have a certain historical
signification, but which breathe a very different spirit from the spirit
of Christianity. Phyllis, it is to be the aim of my life to help on the
great work of making the Church once more the Church of the people--of
making it in reality the exponent of Christianity and Judaism. That is
my aim, and I want you to be my helper in this work."

"And I tell you that I shall oppose you by all the means in my power,
paltry though my power may be."

Her eyes were flashing and she made a little automatic motion with her
hands, as if sweeping something away from before her. He had become pale
and there was a light in his eyes. He felt angry at this girl who had
shown herself ready to argue with him,--in her girlish fashion, of
course,--and who, after listening to his incontrovertible arguments,
fell back resolutely upon a platitude, and considered that she had got
the better of him.

She had got the better of him, too; that was the worst of it; his object
in going to her, in arguing with her, was to induce her to promise to
marry him, and he had failed.

It was on this account he was angry. He might have had a