“My dear sir,” he said, in his consequential and litanical tenor, “you will hardly credit it, but I am being bothered most abominably in my own village by a certain vagrant tub-thumper, who has had the insolence to hold open-air services under my very nose.”
Gabriel professed a somewhat cynical sympathy.
“Such a reflection on your ministrations,” he observed; “as though you neglected your parish! I suppose the man is an agnostic.”
Mr. Mince frowned and puffed irritably at his cigar. He did not appreciate such suggestive sympathy.
“Not a bit of it,” he retorted; “the fellow is a mere ignorant mechanic who comes over every Sunday from Rilchester to instruct ignorant people in Christian ethics. The fellow has even had the insolence to choose the very hour of even-song for his bawling. I was discussing the matter with your father before dinner.”
Apparently Mr. Mince would have preferred rank infidelity in such a rival to the honest profession of Christian principles. In such competition a fellow-believer was more nauseous to him than the blackest atheist who ever blasphemed the Trinity. There was a certain element of personal glory in combating the malignities of a spiritual opponent. Mr. Mince desired to propound the Bible to his own credit.
“I suppose it does not matter vastly,” said Gabriel, with tactless magnanimity, “what a man is so long as he preaches Christ in the right spirit.”
“My dear fellow, you do not realize the pressing peril of this astounding phenomenon of dissent. It is the most calamitous development arising from the abuse of this modern spirit of socialism.”
The topic interested Gabriel enough to inspire in him a mild antagonism.
“The very movement would suggest to me,” he said, “that the laboring classes need a living exposition of the creed and that the Church has proved inadequate to the occasion. Am I to understand that you consider a university education essential to those who desire to be the religious instructors of others?”
“That depends, sir, does it not, upon what people call education. Classics and theology are out of date; science and the study of human nature are to the fore.”
Mr. Mince knocked the ash from his cigar and seemed displeased.
“What is science, sir,” he said, “but a blind man grubbing in a ditch. There is no hope in science. You must really rely on me as an expert in these matters. More experience is granted to those whose studies have extended through many years. We churchmen are specialists on religious education.”