se the wretch isn't back in his old ways
again, and he's got a new notion in his head about how the gospel ought
to be preached. New notions have been plenty enough ever since true
religion started; there's always some man or men thinking out things
for themselves and forgetting everything else on account of them. There
were meddlers of that kind back to the days of the apostles, and
goodness knows the history of the church is full of them. They've been
so set in their ways that no sort of discipline would cure them;
they've even had to be hanged or burned, to save the faith from being
knocked to pieces."

"But, brother Quickset," pleaded the other deacon, "every one knows our
pastor isn't that sort of a person. He is an intelligent, thoughtful,
unexcitable man, that--"

"That's just the kind that always makes the worst heretics," roared the
deacon. "Wasn't Servetus that kind of a person? And didn't Calvin have
to burn him at the stake? I tell you, deacon, it takes a good deal of
the horror out of those times when you have a case of the kind come
right up before your eyes."

"What? Somebody being burned?" exclaimed the other deacon, raising his
hands in horror.

"No, no," testily replied the defender of the faith. "Only somebody
that ought to be."

"But where does the lying come in, that you were talking about?"

"I tell you just what I believe," said Deacon Quickset, dropping his
voice and drawing closer to his associate; "I believe Dr. Guide
believes just what he says,--of course nobody's going to doubt that
he's sincere,--but when it's come to the pinch he's felt a little
shaky. What does any other man do when he finds himself shaky about an
important matter of opinion? Why, he consults a lawyer, and gets
himself pulled through."

"But you don't mean to say that you think Dr. Guide would go to a rank,
persistent disbeliever in anything--but himself--like Ray Bartram, do
you, in a matter of this kind?"

"Why not? Ministers have often got lawyers to help them when they've
been muddled on points of orthodoxy. What the lawyer believes or don't
believe hasn't got anything to do with it: it's his business to believe
as his client does, and make other folks believe so, too. Ray Bartram
is just the sort of a fellow a man would want in such a case. He's got
that way of looking as if he knew everything, just like his father had
before him, that makes folks give in to him in spite of themselves.
Besides, he'll say or