way from Christianity and began to see him plain. If I go on as I am
going, I shall end a Nazarene...."

He thought on. He had a feeling of temerity, but then it seemed as if
God within him bade him be of good courage.

Already in a glow of inspiration he had said practically as much as
he was now thinking in his confirmation address, but now he realized
completely what it was he had then said. There could be no priests,
no specialized ministers of the one true God, because every man to
the utmost measure of his capacity was bound to be God's priest and
minister. Many things one may leave to specialists: surgery, detailed
administration, chemistry, for example; but it is for every man to think
his own philosophy and think out his own religion. One man may tell
another, but no man may take charge of another. A man may avail himself
of electrician or gardener or what not, but he must stand directly
before God; he may suffer neither priest nor king. These other things
are incidental, but God, the kingdom of God, is what he is for.

"Good," he said, checking his reasoning. "So I must bear witness to
God--but neither as priest nor pastor. I must write and talk about him
as I can. No reason why I should not live by such writing and talking if
it does not hamper my message to do so. But there must be no high place,
no ordered congregation. I begin to see my way...."

The evening was growing dark and chill about him now, the sky was barred
with deep bluish purple bands drawn across a chilly brightness that
had already forgotten the sun, the trees were black and dim, but his
understanding of his place and duty was growing very definite.

"And this duty to bear witness to God's kingdom and serve it is so plain
that I must not deflect my witness even by a little, though to do
so means comfort and security for my wife and children. God comes
first...."

"They must not come between God and me...."

"But there is more in it than that."

He had come round at last through the long clearing-up of his mind, to
his fundamental problem again. He sat darkly reluctant.

"I must not play priest or providence to them," he admitted at last. "I
must not even stand between God and them."

He saw now what he had been doing; it had been the flaw in his faith
that he would not trust his family to God. And he saw too that this
distrust has been the flaw in the faith of all religious systems
hitherto....

(13)

In this strange voyage