this universe
nothing compares with that of life followed by eternal redemption
through personal effort interpreted by a mediator. The bare Christian
tenets have a nobility that it kills me to see belittled by the bored,
half-hearted observances of most of its protestants, who in turn are not
to be blamed for being half-hearted and bored by the dogmas and
restrictions and littleness with which the great bare scheme has been
enmeshed and clothed. The Methodist Church positively forbids Billy to
play poker or drink, but it just as positively forbids him to see
Pavlowa dance or Beerbohm Tree play Falstaff or Forbes Robertson
incarnate Hamlet. And look at its wretched machinery--they allow a young
man to give his life and expect inspiration from him at six hundred
dollars a year with a wife and two dozen children, which he has been
encouraged to bring down upon himself, dependent on that same six
hundred dollars. The great men who are expected to direct our spiritual
destinies don't get as much money as many ordinary grocers and certainly
not enough to support their obligations with dignity. What is true of
the Methodist Church is true of all the rest, in perhaps a greater
degree. So with their smallness and their pettiness and their befogging
stupidity I feel that they may be denying thinkers like you and me the
use of their scheme and we'll have to find another for ourselves if we
want immortality."

"Do we want that immortality?" asked Nickols easily. "This world is a
pretty good old place if you don't regard the 'shalt nots,' but isn't it
long enough to live the allotted time? What do we want to do it all
over again for, that is, provided we do all the pleasant things while we
have the chance? I don't want to see any play twice, even a masterpiece.
I wouldn't want to live again unless I had been a Christian in this life
and felt that I wanted to come back and do a lot of the things I had
just heard about and previously hadn't tried."

"Certainly I wouldn't want another life that is as unsatisfied as this,"
I murmured, more to myself than to Nickols.

"Do the things that satisfy," he urged again, and I could see a deviltry
dancing at me out of the corner of his eyes that I resented deeply
without exactly knowing why.

"Harriet Henderson can't get Mark Morgan's love or--his children, and
Nell Morgan is unattainable for Billy. Though they have all the world's
goods and go a pace that pleases them, they are unsatisfied.