had a mission?" Hodder interrupted.
He had been listening with rapt attention.

"I still believed it," said Mr. Bentley. "My conception of that mission
changed, grew, and yet it seemed further and further from fulfilment.
And then you came to St. John's."

"I!" The cry was involuntary.

"You," Mr. Bentley repeated. "Sometimes," he added whimsically, "I go
there, as I have told you. I saw you, I heard you preach. I talked to
my friend Waring about you. I saw that your eyes were not opened, but
I think I had a certain presentiment, for which I do not pretend to
account, that they would be opened."

"You mean," said the rector, "that if I believe in the mission of the
Church as I have partially stated it here tonight, I--should stay and
fight for it."

"Precisely," Mr. Bentley replied.

There was a note of enthusiasm, almost of militancy in the old
gentleman's tone that surprised and agitated Hodder. He took a turn up
and down the room before he answered.

"I ought to tell you that the view I expressed a moment ago is new to
me. I had not thought of it before, and it is absolutely at variance
with any previous ideas I have held. I can see that it must involve,
if carried to its logical conclusion, a change in the conception of
Christianity I have hitherto held."

He was too intent upon following up the thought to notice Mr. Bentley's
expression of assent.

"And suppose," he asked, "I were unable to come to any conclusion? I
will be frank, Mr. Bentley, and confess to you that at present I cannot
see my way. You have heard me preach--you know what my beliefs have
been. They are shattered. And, while I feel that there is some definite
connection between the view of the Church which I mentioned and her
message to the individual, I do not perceive it clearly. I am not
prepared at present to be the advocate of Christianity, because I do not
know what Christianity is. I thought I knew.

"I shall have to begin all over again, as though I had never taken
orders, submit to a thorough test, examine the evidence impartially. It
is the only way. Of this much I am sure, that the Church as a whole
has been engaged in a senseless conflict with science and progressive
thought, that she has insisted upon the acceptance of facts which are in
violation of reason and which have nothing to do with religion. She has
taught them to me--made them, in fact, a part of me. I have clung to
them as long as I can, and in throwing them over