t know, that much of what he
asserted so emphatically was based on mere belief rather than
demonstrable fact or rational processes of arriving at a conclusion.
Sometimes both Sam Carr and Tommy Ashe were present at these oral tilts,
sitting back in silent amusement at Mr. Thompson's intellectual
floundering.

A clean cut in the flesh of a healthy man heals quickly. In two weeks
Thompson could put his full weight on the injured member without pain or
any tendency to reopening the wound. Whereupon he repaired to his cabin
again, in a state of mind that was very disturbing. Without accepting
any of the Carr dictums upon theology and theological activities, he was
fast growing doubtful of his fitness for the job of herding other people
into the fold. He found himself with a growing disinclination for such a
task as his life work. Since that was the only thing he had any aptitude
for or training in, when he thought of cutting loose and facing the
world at large without the least idea of what he should do or how he
should do it, he perceived himself in a good deal of a dilemma.

He was growing sure of one thing. Over and above the good of his soul
and other people's souls, a man must eat--to put it baldly. He should
earn his keep. He must indeed calculate upon provision for two. Mr.
Thompson had made the common mistake of believing himself
self-sufficient, and Sophie Carr had unwittingly taught him that a male
celibate was an anomaly in nature's reckoning. He had thought himself
immune from the ordinary passions of humanity. The strangest part of it
was a saddened gladness that he was not. Somehow, he did not want to be
a spiritual superman. He would rather love and struggle and suffer than
stand aloof, thanking God that he was not, like the Pharisees, as other
men. Sitting moodily by his rusty stove he confessed to himself that a
man who would gladly give up his hopes of eternal salvation for the
privilege of folding Sophie Carr close in his arms had no business in
the ministry--unless he simply wanted to hold down an easy, salaried
job.

Whatever other sorts of a fool he might have been Thompson was no
hypocrite. He had never consciously looked upon the ministry as a man
looks upon a business career--a succession of steps to success, to an
assured social and financial position. Yet when he turned the
searchlight of analysis upon his motives he could not help seeing that
this was the very thing he had unwittingly been doi