You believe in nothing."

"Nothing which limits the power or the goodness of the Almighty," I
answered.

"You have evolved all this from your own spiritual pride and
self-sufficiency," said he, hotly. "Why do you not turn to that Deity
whose name you use. Why do you not humble yourself before Him?"

"How do you know I don't?"

"You said yourself that you never went to church."

"I carry my own church about under my own hat," said I. "Bricks and
mortar won't make a staircase to heaven. I believe with your Master that
the human heart is the best temple. I am sorry to see that you differ
from Him upon the point."

Perhaps it was too bad of me to say that. I might have guarded without
countering. Anyhow; it had the effect of ending an interview which was
becoming oppressive. My visitor was too indignant to answer, and swept
out of the room without a word. From my window I could see him hurry
down the street, a little black angry thing, very hot and troubled
because he cannot measure the whole universe with his pocket square and
compasses.

Think of it, and think of what he is, an atom among atoms, standing at
the meeting point of two eternities! But what am I, a brother atom, that
I should judge him?

After all, I own to you, that it might have been better had I listened
to what he had to say, and refused to give my own views. On the other
hand, truth MUST be as broad as the universe which it is to explain, and
therefore far broader than anything which the mind of man can conceive.
A protest against sectarian thought must always be an aspiration towards
truth. Who shall dare to claim a monopoly of the Almighty? It would be
an insolence on the part of a solar system, and yet it is done every
day by a hundred little cliques of mystery mongers. There lies the real
impiety.

Well, the upshot of it all is, my dear Bertie, that I have begun my
practice by making an enemy of the man who, of the whole parish, has the
most power to injure me. I know what my father would think about it, if
he knew.

And now I come to the great event of this morning, from which I am still
gasping. That villain Cullingworth has cut the painter, and left me to
drift as best I may.

My post comes at eight o'clock in the morning, and I usually get my
letters and take them into bed to read them. There was only one this
morning, addressed in his strange, unmistakable hand. I made sure,
of course, that it was my promised remittance, and I open