Phyllis of Philistia | Page 9

hands. But you, Phyllis----"
"I have read your book now, Mr. Holland----"
"Ah, let me plead with you, Phyllis--not 'Mr. Holland,' I entreat of you."
"And my first thought on reading it was that I had not written to you so strongly as I should have done."
"My dear Phyllis, do not say that, I beg of you. You cannot know how you pain me."
"To be misunderstood by you--you."
She got upon her feet so quickly that it might almost be said she sprang up.
"You must have misunderstood me greatly, Mr. Holland, if you fancied that you could write such a book as you wrote and not get such a letter from me. The Bible--Ruth--and you a clergyman--reading it daily in the church----Oh! I cannot tell you all that I thought--all that I still think."
He did not correct the mistake she had made. She had no right to accuse him of reading the Bible daily in his church. He was not in the habit of doing that--it was his curates who did it. He watched her as she stood at a window with her back turned to him. Her hands were behind her. Her breath came audibly, for she had spoken excitedly.
Then he also rose and came beside her.
"I wrote that book, as I believed you would perceive when you had read it, in order to remove from the minds of the people--those people who have not given the matter a thought--the impression--I know it prevails--that our faith--the truth of our religion--is dependent upon the acceptance as good of such persons as our very religion itself enables us to pronounce evil. My aim was to show that our faith is not built upon such a foundation of impurity--of imperfection. The spirit which prevails nowadays--the modern spirit--it is the result of the development of science. This scientific spirit necessitates the consideration of all the elements of our faith from the standpoint of reason."
"Faith--reason?"
"If the Church is to appeal to all men, its method must be scientific. It is sad to think of all that the Church has lost in the past through the want of wisdom of those who had its best interests at heart, and believed they were doing it good service by opposing scientific research. They fancied that the faith would not survive the light of truth. They professed to believe that the faith was strong enough to work miracles--to change the heart of man, and yet that it would be jeopardized by the calculations of astronomers. The astronomers were prohibited from calculating; the geologists were forbidden to unearth the mysteries of their science, lest the discovery of the truth should be detrimental to the faith. They believed that the truth was opposed to the faith. Warning after warning the Church received that the two were one; that man would only accept the truth, whether it came from the lips of the churchman or from the investigations of science. Grudgingly the Church became tolerant of the seekers after truth--men who were not greatly concerned in the preservation of the mummy dust of dogma. But how many thousand persons are there not, to-day, who think that the Church is on one side, and the truth on the other? The intolerant attitude of the Church, still maintained in these days, when the spirit of science pervades every form of thought, has been productive of probably the largest body that ever existed in the country, of sensible men and women, who never enter a church door. They want to know whatsoever things are true; they do not want to be dredged with the mummy dust of dogma."
"But the Bible--the Bible!"
"It is necessary for me to tell you all that I feel on this subject; all that I have felt for several years past--ever since I left the divinity school behind me, and went into the world of thinking men and women. It is necessary to tell these men and women in unmistakable language that our faith aims at a perfect type of manhood--at the perfection of truth. It is necessary to tell them that we do not regard, except with abhorrence, such types of men as have for centuries been held up to admiration simply because they have for centuries been the objects of admiration, of imitation, of veneration, on the part of the debased people who gave us the earlier books of the Bible. The memory of Jacob became the dominant influence among the Hebrew nation; hence the continuous curse that rested upon them, the curse that rests upon the cheat, the defrauder of his own household, his brother, his father, his uncle. It is necessary to say that the world should know that our religion is founded upon truth, purity, self-sacrifice--that it abhors the cheat and the sensualist. It is necessary to proclaim to the