nd my friend sat smiling, twisting between his
thin fingers the little gold cross on his silk vest.

Then all of a sudden we did begin to talk; and not of those matters of
which the well-bred naturally converse--the habits of the rarer kinds of
ducks, and the careers of our College friends, but of something never
mentioned in polite society.

At lunch our hostess had told me the sad story of an unhappy marriage,
and I had itched spiritually to find out what my friend, who seemed so
far away from me, felt about such things. And now I determined to find
out.

"Tell me," I asked him, "which do you consider most important--the letter
or the spirit of Christ's teachings?"

"My dear fellow," he answered gently, "what a question! How can you
separate them?"

"Well, is it not the essence of His doctrine that the spirit is all
important, and the forms of little value? Does not that run through all
the Sermon on the Mount?"

"Certainly."

"If, then," I said, "Christ's teaching is concerned with the spirit, do
you consider that Christians are justified in holding others bound by
formal rules of conduct, without reference to what is passing in their
spirits?"

"If it is for their good."

"What enables you to decide what is for their good?"

"Surely, we are told."

"Not to judge, that ye be not judged."

"Oh! but we do not, ourselves, judge; we are but impersonal ministers of
the rules of God."

"Ah! Do general rules of conduct take account of the variations of the
individual spirit?"

He looked at me hard, as if he began to scent heresy.

"You had better explain yourself more fully," he said. "I really don't
follow."

"Well, let us take a concrete instance. We know Christ's saying of the
married that they are one flesh! But we know also that there are wives
who continue to live the married life with dreadful feelings of spiritual
revolt wives who have found out that, in spite of all their efforts, they
have no spiritual affinity with their husbands. Is that in accordance
with the spirit of Christ's teaching, or is it not?"

"We are told----" he began.

"I have admitted the definite commandment: 'They twain shall be one
flesh.' There could not be, seemingly, any more rigid law laid down; how
do you reconcile it with the essence of Christ's teaching? Frankly, I
want to know: Is there or is there not a spiritual coherence in
Christianity, or is it only a gathering of laws and precepts, with no
inher