"Mary," he said to me, as we sat at our evening meal the day after his return, "I must read and study more. This visit has been an eye-opener to me. I 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?"