"And cannot you get at it in the recognised places of worship. Doesn't it savour of conceit to set yourselves apart as people better and wiser than their neighbours?"
"Oh! Well, come to that, Mr. Jones, you are a Dissenter yourself, you know. You dissented from established orthodoxy. We aren't afraid of dissenting from orthodox dissent."
"But there must be limits, young man; there must be limits."
"Yes," assented Tom. "There must be limits. There are the limitations of the human mind. We don't seek to go beyond them."
Mr. Jones was now thoroughly roused. He was a man of no mean intelligence and of a wide range of reading. If also he was a man of insatiable vanity and inordinate ambition, perhaps the atmosphere of adulation in which he lived, the incense of incompetent judges, were the chief causes. He felt now that he was talking to a man of sense and fearlessness. Now it is a treat to talk with a man who has the sense and the patience and the disposition to think for himself, and the courage to speak his thoughts. Mr. Jones walked in silence for a time, Tom moderating his longer stride to keep time with the cleric's shorter pace.
"I hope," said Mr. Jones, at length, "I hope your teaching is based on the cardinal principles of Christianity?"
"The Immaculate Conception and the Resurrection of our Lord."
"Those are not principles Mr. Jones. They are either facts or inventions."
"I don't myself touch on them at all. I confine myself to the cardinal principles about which you have enquired."
"And those?" enquired Mr. Jones, in his turn.
"The fatherhood of God, the majesty, the wisdom, the sanctity of His laws, and--the brotherhood of man."
Mr. Jones shook his hand sadly. "That is merely Natural Religion," he commented. "Men will find it but a broken reed in the hour of temptation and the time of sorrow."
"It suffices," said Tom "for some of the wisest, the best-living, the most benevolent of men."
"The Jews," said Tom quietly. "Contrast the life of the average Jew with that of the average Christian. Will you find the difference always in favour of the Christian?"
"Surely, yes," said Mr. Jones. "An unbeliever can never have the impregnable assurance that we find in the crucified Christ."