eology had been studied to help him to understand
his God and his Bible, not to give him a set of rules for preaching. So
when he stood up in the pulpit it was not to follow any conventional
order of service, or to try to imitate the great preachers he had heard,
but to give the people who came something that would help them to live
during the week and enable them to realize the Presence of Christ in
their daily lives.

The men at the seminary got wind of it somehow, and came down by twos
and threes, and finally dozens, as they could get away from their own
preaching, to see what the dickens that close-mouthed Courtland was
doing, and went away thoughtful. It was not what they had expected of
their brilliant classmate, ministering to these common working-people
right in the neighborhood where they lived and worked.

At first they did not understand how he came to be in that church, and
asked what denomination it was, anyway. Courtland said he really didn't
know what it had been, but that he hoped it was the denomination of
Jesus Christ now.

"But whose church is it?" they asked.

"Mine," he said, simply.

Then they turned to Pat for explanation.

"That's straight," said Pat. "He bought it."

"_Bought_ it! Oh!" They were silenced. Not one of them could have bought
a church, and wouldn't have if they could. They would have bought a good
mansion for themselves against their retiring-day. Few of them
understood it. Only the man who was going to darkest Africa to work in
the jungles, and a couple who were bound, one for the leper country,
and another for China, had a light of understanding in their eyes, and
gripped Courtland's hand with reverence and ecstatic awe.

"But, man alive!" lingered one, unwilling to leave his brilliant friend
in such a hopeless hole. "Don't you realize if you don't hitch on to
some denomination, or board of trustees, or something, your work won't
count in the long run? Who's to carry on your work and keep up your name
and what you have done, after you are gone? You're foolish!" He had just
received a flattering call to a city church himself, and he knew he was
not half so well fitted for it as Courtland.

But Courtland flung up his hat in a boyish way and laughed. "I should
worry about my name after I am gone," he said. "And as for the work,
it's for me to do, isn't it? Not for me to arrange for after I'm dead.
If my heavenly Father wants it to keep up after I'm gone He'll manage to
fin