ch shorter
sermons or to explain away the book of Genesis more agreeably than the
rector of St. Asaph's; and if he found it necessary to refer to the
Deity he did so under the name of Jehovah or Jah, or even Yaweh in a
manner calculated not to hurt the sensitiveness of any of the
parishioners. People who would shudder at brutal talk of the older
fashion about the wrath of God listened with well-bred interest to a
sermon on the personal characteristics of Jah. In the same way Mr.
Furlong always referred to the devil, not as Satan but as Su or Swa,
which took all the sting out of him. Beelzebub he spoke of as
Behel-Zawbab, which rendered him perfectly harmless. The Garden of Eden
he spoke of as the Paradeisos, which explained it entirely; the flood
as the Diluvium, which cleared it up completely; and Jonah he named,
after the correct fashion Jon Nah, which put the whole situation (his
being swallowed by Baloo or the Great Lizard) on a perfectly
satisfactory footing. Hell itself was spoken of as She-ol, and it
appeared that it was not a place of burning, but rather of what one
might describe as moral torment. This settled She-ol once and for all:
nobody minds moral torment. In short, there was nothing in the
theological system of Mr. Furlong that need have occasioned in any of
his congregation a moment's discomfort.

There could be no greater contrast with Mr. Fareforth Furlong than the
minister of St. Osoph's, the Rev. Dr. McTeague, who was also honorary
professor of philosophy at the university. The one was young, the other
was old; the one could dance the other could not; the one moved about
at church picnics and lawn teas among a bevy of disciples in pink and
blue sashes; the other moped around under the trees of the university
campus with blinking eyes that saw nothing and an abstracted mind that
had spent fifty years in trying to reconcile Hegel with St. Paul, and
was still busy with it. Mr. Furlong went forward with the times; Dr.
McTeague slid quietly backwards with the centuries.

Dr. McTeague was a failure, and all his congregation knew it. "He is
not up to date," they said. That was his crowning sin. "He don't go
forward any," said the business members of the congregation. "That old
man believes just exactly the same sort of stuff now that he did forty
years ago. What's more, he preaches it. You can't run a church that
way, can you?"

His trustees had done their best to meet the difficulty. They had
offered