t you
should be fully apprised of my new belief and intentions. I owe this
to you, for your loyal support in the pest. I shall go over with you,
later, if you care to listen, my whole position. It may be called the
extreme Protestant position, and I use protestant, for want of a better
word, to express what I believe is Paul's true as distinguished from the
false of his two inconsistent theologies. It was this doctrine of Paul's
of redemption by faith, of reacting grace by an inevitable spiritual
law--of rebirth, if you will--that Luther and the Protestant reformers
revived and recognized, rightly, as the vital element of Christ's
teachings, although they did not succeed in separating it wholly
from the dross which clung to it. It is the leaven which has changed
governments, and which in the end, I am firmly convinced, will make true
democracy inevitable. And those who oppose democracy inherently dread
its workings.

"I do not know your views, but it is only fair to add at this time that
I no longer believe in the external and imposed authority of the Church
in the sense in which I formerly accepted it, nor in the virgin birth,
nor in certain other dogmas in which I once acquiesced. Other clergymen
of our communion have proclaimed, in speech and writing, their disbelief
in these things. I have satisfied my conscience as they have, and I mean
to make no secret of my change. I am convinced that not one man or woman
in ten thousand to-day who has rejected Christianity ever knew
what Christianity is. The science and archaic philosophy in which
Christianity has been swaddled and hampered is discredited, and the
conclusion is drawn that Christianity itself must be discredited."

"Ye're going to preach all this?" McCrae demanded, almost fiercely.

"Yes," Hodder replied, still uncertain as to his assistant's attitude,
"and more. I have fully reflected, and I am willing to accept all the
consequences. I understand perfectly, McCrae, that the promulgation
alone of the liberal orthodoxy of which I have spoken will bring me into
conflict with the majority of the vestry and the congregation, and that
the bishop will be appealed to. They will say, in effect, that I have
cheated them, that they hired one man and that another has turned up,
whom they never would have hired. But that won't be the whole story. If
it were merely a question of doctrine, I should resign. It's deeper than
that, more sinister." Hodder doubled up his hand, a