John Gregory looked at Ingraham steadily for a moment before speaking, and then said very slowly:—
“Do you remember what the Master said to a certain ruler, ‘Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and come, follow me’? If you are in earnest, Mr. Ingraham, and if you feel that, as your experience of sin has been in no light and common form, but in a depth of agony which few men ever know, so your repentance should be along no mild and easy lines, but should reach to the foundations of your life—if, I say, you see things thus, and can bear so strong a prescription, I should repeat to you literally what Christ said to the rich ruler. It is a hard saying; not every man can receive it.”
The two men faced each other in silence for a moment, and Gregory saw the leap of a sudden question in the other’s eyes.
“No,” he said sternly, as if in answer to a spoken inquiry, “I am not advising you with an eye on my own advantage. My thought was not of my own cause, but of the cause of humanity anywhere. Pardon me if I speak plainly; I could not use a farthing of your money, were it all at my disposal, for building up the work I am seeking to establish in Fraternia. Recall what you heard me say to-night of the true Kingdom of God. I could not use your money, Mr. Ingraham, in seeking to show forth that kingdom; but I could use you, should you wish to come with us, if you came empty-handed.”
The lawyer felt the pitiless severity of Gregory’s moral standard and all that this dictum implied, but he did not resist it. His humiliation and submission were sincere, and, for the time at least, controlling; but doubt and conflict were plainly read in his face.
“Is it a hard saying?” John Gregory asked, with a slight smile.
“Yes, harder than you know. I could do what you say, were I alone to be considered; but to reduce my family to beggary, to cut short my career and stain my reputation by the cloud which would inevitably rest upon it in the community by such an unheard-of course of action, to take my wife and daughters from their social world to follow me, sent like a scapegoat into some wilderness—really, Mr. Gregory, what you name is beyond reason!”
Gregory made absolutely no response. After a long silence, Ingraham said thoughtfully:—
“This is about the way I see for myself: from this time on I shall seek to live a humbler and a sincerely Christian life, and shall strive in every way open to me to aid and further the cause of righteousness, with my money and with my influence. In this way I shall bring happiness and satisfaction to my wife, to whom I owe the highest obligation, next to God, instead of destroying her comfort by dragging her with me into some late missionary endeavour or eccentric experiment. Pardon me, Mr. Gregory, if I too speak plainly.
“But this is not all. Although I feel no individual call in the direction of your coöperative colony, and am not over sanguine of its success, I do believe profoundly in you, personally, as I must have shown you. Now I want you to reconsider what you said a little while ago. Frankly, this discriminating between money made in one way or another savours to me of superstition. This money, which is mine, cannot be destroyed; even you would hardly advise that. Why not put it to a good use, the best possible from your point of view? I have never given away money largely, but I am able to, and I want to seal our interview to-night with a substantial gift.”