m shack home, and live as
the plantation hand lives? If you would, the world's profit out of you,
and your own profit out of yourself, wouldn't be much. Real education
does exactly mean discontent. And the people who are discontented may be
uncomfortable to live with, if we think they ought to be docile, but
they get us forward."

"Maybe you're right," J.W. conceded, "and the church is not to be
blamed. Still, if our work for the black man has made him troublesome,
and given him ideas bigger than he can hope to realize, how does that
fit in with our Christianity? Shouldn't the church be a peacemaker,
instead of a trouble-maker?"

"Now, John Wesley, Jr.," the other said, in mock protest, "that sermon
of mine on 'Not Peace, but a Sword' must have been wasted on you. Our
Lord most certainly came to make peace, and he spoke a great blessing on
peacemakers. But he was himself the world's greatest disturber. Peace
while there is injustice, or ignorance, or any sort of wickedness, has
nothing to do with Christ's intentions. I know that the old-time
slave-traders of the North, and the more persistent slave-buyers of the
South, were always asking for that sort of peace. But they couldn't have
it. Nobody ever can have it, so long as Jesus has a single follower in
the world."

"Well, what has all this to do," asked J.W., "with our church's special
work for the colored people?"

"Ah, yes," the pastor answered, "that's the very thing you must find out
before you make that address of welcome."

By this time J.W. had gathered up a pile of books, pamphlets, reports,
and papers--enough, he thought, to serve as the raw material of a Ph.D.
thesis, and he said to Mr. Drury, "Would you mind if I took this home?
I'll bring it all back, and it's not likely I'll damage it much.".

The asking was no more than a form; for years the people of First Church
had known themselves freely welcome to any book in the preacher's
shelves. An interest in his books was passport to his special favor. His
own evident love for books had been the best possible insurance that
these particular borrowers would be more scrupulous than the general.
This bit of pastoral work, it should be said, with the frequent
book-talk that grew out of it, was not least among all the reasons why
First Church people thought their bachelor minister just the man for
them.

So off went J.W. with his armful, and for a week thereafter you might
have supposed he was cramming for