hroat; and _he_ keeps on
puking at it as if it was physic, because he don't know any better,
and can't know any better at his age. Is that the way to make him take
kindly to religious teaching? I know as well as you do, that he roared
like a young Turk at the sermon. And pray what was the subject of the
sermon? Justification by Faith. Do you mean to tell me that he, or any
other child at his time of life, could understand anything of such a
subject as that; or get an atom of good out of it? You can't--you know
you can't! I say again, it's no use taking him to church yet; and what's
more, it's worse than no use, for you only associate his first ideas
of religious instruction with everything in the way of restraint and
discipline and punishment that can be most irksome to him. There! that's
my opinion, and I should like to hear what you've got to say against
it?"

"Latitudinarianism," said Mr. Thorpe, looking and speaking straight at
the portrait of the Reverend Aaron Yollop.

"You can't fob me off with long words, which I don't understand, and
which I don't believe you can find in Johnson's Dictionary," continued
Mr. Goodworth doggedly. "You would do much better to take my advice, and
let Zack go to church, for the present, at his mother's knees. Let his
Morning Service be about ten minutes long; let your wife tell him, out
of the New Testament, about Our Savior's goodness and gentleness to
little children; and then let her teach him, from the Sermon on the
Mount, to be loving and truthful and forbearing and forgiving, for Our
Savior's sake. If such precepts as those are enforced--as they may be
in one way or another--by examples drawn from his own daily life; from
people around him; from what he meets with and notices and asks about,
out of doors and in--mark my words, he'll take kindly to his religious
instruction. I've seen that in other children: I've seen it in my own
children, who were all brought up so. Of course, you don't agree with
me! Of course you've got another objection all ready to bowl me down
with?"

"Rationalism," said Mr. Thorpe, still looking steadily at the
lithographed portrait of the Reverend Aaron Yollop.

"Well, your objection's a short one this time at any rate; and that's a
blessing!" said the old gentleman rather irritably. "Rationalism--eh? I
understand that _ism,_ I rather suspect, better than the other. It
means in plain English, that you think I'm wrong in only wanting to give
religio