"I will if you say the word, but--" he paused.

"You were here first," she returned with a smile. Really, she thought, there was no reason why she should drive him away. He was so evidently a gentleman, and the place was on the public thoroughfare.

"Then I may stay?" He dropped on the gra.s.s at her feet with an exclamation of satisfaction and pleasure.

Looking away over the landscape where the clouds and shadows were racing, and the warm autumn light lay on the varying shades of green and brown, he remarked: "Do you know when I see a bit of out-doors like that, on such a day as this, or when I am out in the woods or up in the hills, I wonder what men build churches for, anyway. I fear I must be something of a pagan, for I often feel that I can worship G.o.d best in his own temple.

Quite heathenish isn't it?" He laughed, but under the laugh there was a note of troubled seriousness.

She looked at him curiously. "And is it heathenish to worship G.o.d outside of a church? If it is I fear that I, too, am a heathen."

He noted the words "I, too," and saw instantly that she did not know him but had understood from his words that he was not a church man. He felt that he ought to correct her false impression, that he ought to tell her who and what he was, but he was possessed of a curious feeling of reluctance to declare his calling.

The truth is, Dan Matthews did not want to meet this woman as a priest, but as a man. He had already learned how the moment the preacher was announced the man was pushed into the background.

While he hesitated she watched him with increasing interest. His words had pleased her; she waited for him to speak again.

"I suppose your profession does keep you from anything like regular church attendance," he said.

"Yes," she answered, "I have found that sick people do not as a rule observe a one-day-in-seven religion. But it is not my professional duties that keep me from church."

"You are not then--"

"Decidedly I am not," she answered.

"Really, you surprise me. I thought of course you were a member of some church."

There was a touch of impatience in her quick reply. "You thought 'of course'? And why of course, please?"

He started to answer, but she went on quickly, "I know why; because I am a woman, _the weaker s.e.x_!"

It is not possible to describe the fine touch in her voice when she said "the weaker s.e.x." It was so delicately done, that it had none of the coa.r.s.eness that commonly marks like expressions, when used by some women.

Dan was surprised to feel that it emphasized the fineness of her character, as well as its strength.

"Because I am not a man must I be _useless_?" she continued. "Is a woman's life of so little influence in the world that she can spend it in _make-believe living_ as little girls play at being grown up? Have I not as great a right to my paganism as you call it, as you have to yours?"

Again he saw his opportunity and realized that he ought to correct her mistake in a.s.suming from his words that he was not a man of church affiliation, but again he pa.s.sed it by saying slowly, instead: "I think your kind of paganism must be a very splendid thing; no one could think of one in that dress as useless."

"I did not mean--"

"I understand I think," he said earnestly, "but won't you tell me why you feel so about the church?"

She laughed as she returned, "One might think from your awful seriousness that you were a preacher. Father Confessor, if you please--" she began mockingly, then stopped--arrested by the expression of his face. "Oh I beg your pardon, have I been rude?"

With a forced laugh he answered, "Oh no, indeed, not at all. It is only that your views of the Christian religion surprise me."

"My views of the Christian religion," she repeated, very serious now. "I did not know that my views of Christianity were mentioned."

He was bewildered. "But the church! You were speaking of the church."

"And the church and Christianity are one and the same of course." Again with a touch of sarcasm, more p.r.o.nounced, "You will tell me next, I suppose, that a minister really ministers."

Dan was astonished and hurt. He had learned much of the spirit of Christianity in his backwoods home, but he knew nothing of churches except that which the school had taught him. He had accepted the church to which he belonged at its own valuation, highly colored by biased historians. Such words as these were to his ears little less than sacrilege. He was shocked that they should come from one whose personality and evident character had impressed him so strongly. His voice was doubtful and perplexed as he said: "But is not that true church of Christ, which is composed of his true disciples, Christian?

Surely, they can no more be separated than the sun can be separated from the sunshine; and is not the ministry a vital part of that church?"

Miss Farwell, seeing him so troubled, wondered whether she understood him. She felt that she was talking too freely to this stranger, but his questions drew her on, and she was curiously anxious that he should understand her.

"I was not thinking of that true church composed of the true disciples of Christ," she returned. "And that is just it, don't you see? _This true church that is so inseparable from the religion of Christ is so far forgotten that it never enters into any thought of the church at all._ The sun always shines, it is true, but we do not always have the sunshine. There are the dark and stormy days, you know, and sometimes there is an eclipse. To me these are the dark days, so dark that I wonder sometimes if it is not an eclipse." She paused then added deliberately, "This selfish, wasteful, cruel, heartless thing that men have built up around their opinions, and whims, and ambitions, has so come between the people and the Christianity of the Christ, that they are beginning to question if, indeed, there is anywhere such a thing as the true church."

Again Dan was startled at her words and by her pa.s.sionate earnestness; the more so that, in the manner of her speaking as in her words, there was an impersonal touch very unusual to those who speak on religious topics. And there was a note of sadness in her voice as well. It was as if she spoke to him professionally of the sickness of some one dear to her and sought to keep her love for her patient from influencing her calm consideration of the case.

His next words were forced from him almost against his will. And his eyes had that wide questioning look so like that of his mother. "And the ministry," he said.

She answered, "You ask if the ministry is not a vital part of the church, and your very question expresses conditions clearly. What conception of Christianity is it that makes it possible for us to even think of the ministry as a part of the church? Why, the true church is a ministry!

There can be no other reason for its existence. But don't you see how we have come to think of the ministry as we have come to think of the church? It is to us, as you say, a part of this great organization that men have created and control, and in this we are right, for this church has made the minister, and this minister has in turn made the church.

They are indeed inseparable."

Dan caught up a flower that she had dropped and began picking it to pieces with trembling fingers.

"To me," he said slowly, "the minister is a servant of G.o.d. I believe, of course, that whatever work a man does in life he must do as his service to the race and in that sense he serves G.o.d. But the ministry--"

he reached for another flower, choosing his words carefully, "the ministry is, to me, the highest service to which a man may be called."

She did not reply but looked away over the valley.

"Tell me," he said, "is it not so?"

"If you believe it, then to you it is so," she answered.

"But you--" he urged, "how do you look upon the minister?"

"Why should I tell you? What difference does it make what I think? You forget that we are strangers." She smiled. "Let us talk about the weather; that's a safe topic."

"I _had_ forgotten that we are strangers," he said, with an answering smile. "But I am interested in what you have said because you--you have evidently thought much upon the matter, and your profession must certainly give you opportunities for observation. Tell me, how do you look upon the minister and his work?"

She studied him intently before she answered. Then--as if satisfied with what she found in his face, she said calmly: "To me he is the most useless creature in all the world. He is a man set apart from all those who live lives of service, who do the work of the world. And then that he should be distinguished from these world-workers, these servers, by this n.o.blest of all t.i.tles--_a minister_, is the bitterest irony that the mind of the race ever conceived."

Her companion's face was white now as he answered quickly, "But surely a minister of the gospel is doing G.o.d's will and is therefore serving G.o.d."

She answered as quickly, "Man serves G.o.d only by serving men. There can be no ministry but the ministry of man to man."

"But the minister is a man."

"The world cannot accept him as such, because his individuality is lost in the church to which he belongs. Other inst.i.tutions employ a man's time, the church employs his life; he has no existence outside his profession. There is no outside the church for him. The world cannot know him as a man, for he is all preacher."

"But the church employs him to minister to the world?"

"I cannot see that it does so at all. On the contrary a church employs a pastor to serve itself. To the churches Christianity has become a question of fidelity to a church and creed and not to the spirit of Christ. The minister's standing and success in his calling, the amount of his salary, even, depends upon his devotion to the particular views of the church that calls him and his ability to please those who pay him for pleasing them. His service to the world does not enter into the transaction any more than when you buy the latest novel of your favorite author, or purchase a picture that pleases you, or buy a ticket to hear your favorite musician. We do not pretend, when we do these things that we are ministering to the world, or that we are moved to spend our money thus to serve G.o.d, even though there may be in the book, the picture, or the music, many things that will make the world better."

The big fellow moved uneasily.