Then I reached back, snatched up his photo, laid it bottom upward on top of the collars. I didn't feel that I could look him squarely in the face till I had it setting back on the mantel in the house at Redwine.
I have got the first out-and-out orthodox Methodist feeling of being backslid I ever had in my life. And it was not going to the theaters and tea parties that brought it on. It was going to church every Sunday and hearing some preacher explain away the Divinity of Jesus, or reduce His miracles to scientific formulas. I do not wonder that so many men and women go wrong in New York. They are orphans, deprived of their Heavenly Father by the very preachers themselves. And it's very hard for orphans to behave themselves. They know what is right, but righteousness does not appeal to them, because it has never been sanctified by love. That is what is the matter with these people. They do not love God, they do not care, or know, or believe that He loves them. They are so sensible, so profoundly reasonable that they are sadly damned already by their own little intelligences. They have theories, views and knowledges that are not going to show up well in the next generation. And that is their crime, to propagate ideas that will destroy the integrity of those who will come after them.