am sadly behind the times."

"Yes, William," I replied shrewdly, for I had never heard him talk so
"fresh" before, "you must read and study more, for a preacher has
something bigger than 'the times' on his conscience."

"What do you mean?"

"That the times are so transient, that a preacher is called to deliver
a message about what is far more permanent."

"I think, Mary," he went on, assuming the reasoning air that a man
always takes when he thinks he is trying to make a woman think, but
when he is only trying to make her agree with what he thinks, "I think
one reason why Pendleton has gotten on in the Church and been of so
much more service there than I have is because he has kept up with his
times. He is a very learned man, and he preaches right up to the
present moment. I'd scarcely have recognized some of the Scriptures as
he interpreted them in the light of modern criticism and conditions."

"You are right, William, there is no doubt that Horace Pendleton has
risen in the Church and been of more service to the Church than you
have been because he knows so much better than you do how to make it
worldly-minded and how to intone the gospel to the same tune, but
_you_, William, are you going to begin to interpret the Scriptures just
to suit your times and modern conditions? I thought Scriptures had
nothing to do with mere 'times,' that they belonged to the ever-lasting
Order of Things."

"I fear you are prejudiced against Pendleton, and incapable of seeing
the good in what he says. Yet he showed a great interest in me, and he
talked to me very seriously about the limitations of my ministry."

"What did he say?"

"For one thing, he said I was identified with a view of God and Man and
the world such as no intelligent, healthy disciple of Christ after the
fashion of John Wesley ever held."

"Could you tell what _his_ view of God was?"

"No, I could not. That was my ignorance. I could not keep up with
him. He preached a very powerful sermon from one of the best texts in
the New Testament the Sunday I was there. He couldn't have done that
unless he had had a very plain view of God."

"Oh, yes, he could," I retorted. "You can preach a much more
satisfactorily powerful sermon in a fashionable modern church if you
don't see God than if you do."

Still William persisted. He began to read strange books that Pendleton
had loaned him, and the more he read the gloomier he looked. His
vocabulary changed.