ers, your visits, your kindly moral influence and talk,
your living example of a goodness derived not from dogmas but from
affectionate following of a holy pattern and trust in revealed mercies,
your pointing to that pattern and showing the daily passage of these
mercies will prompt his search after the truth that has made you what
you are. Let some good woman do for him a mother's part, but choose
her for her general goodness and not for the dogmas of her church. The
simpler her piety the better for him I should say!"

This straightforward speech fell like a new apple of discord in the
midst of the committee. Angry knots were formed, and the noble chairman
found that he could not restore order. An adjournment was agreed to.
Luckily for the body of Ginx's Baby, he had been meanwhile sent to a
home where Protestant money secured to him for the time good living,
while his benefactors were discussing what to do with his soul.

*****

Surely, it were no impertinence to interrupt this history and advert to
the fact, that, in the discussion just related, every one was to some
extent right and to some extent agreed.

That religious teaching was due to an immortal spirit--some notion
and evidence of the Divine and the Great Hereafter to be conveyed to
it--scarce was disputed. Nor was there collision over the necessity
of what is called intellectual cultivation. The boy must be taught
something of the world in which he was to live; nay, this latter
knowledge seemed to be most immediately practical. As each disputant
fixed his eye on one or the other aim that end appeared to him to be the
most important. Hence, by a natural lapse, they came to treat subjects
as antagonistic which were, in fact, parallel and quite consistent. The
one called the others godless--the others threw back the aspersion
of bigotry. Then came complication. What was "religion?" Intellectual
culture they could agree about--it embraced well-known areas; but this
religion divided itself into many disputable fields. These brother
Protestants were like country neighbors who must encounter each other at
fairs, markets, meets, and balls, and smile and greet, though each, at
heart, is looking savagely at the other's landmarks, and most are very
likely fighting bitter lawsuits all the while. It was because religion
meant CREED to most members of the committee, and because it so implies
to the vast bodies they represented, that they could not come to terms
about