“My mode of life has made me see much, has compelled me to do my own thinking. Besides, I am a child of this generation. We suspect everything that has come down to us from the ignorant past. Even so ardent a believer as you, when asked, ‘Do you believe?’ stammers, ‘I think I do.’”
“I am used to one-sided arguments,” said the stranger with a laugh. “Usually, I lay down the law and others listen in silence.”
Emily looked at him curiously. Could he be a minister? No, it was impossible. He was too masculine, too powerful.
“Oh, I was not arguing,” she answered lightly. “I was only trying to suggest that you might be more charitable.”
“I confess,” he said, “that I am always talking to convince myself. I do not know what is right or what is wrong, but I wish to know. I doubt, but I wish to believe. I despair, but I wish to hope.”
She had no answer and they were silent for a few minutes. Then he began:
“I have an impulse to tell you what I would not tell my oldest and dearest friend—perhaps because we are two utter strangers whose paths have crossed in their wanderings through infinity and will never cross again. Do you mind if I speak of myself?”
“No.” Emily intensely wished to hear. “But I warn you that our paths may cross again.”
“That does not matter. I am obeying an instinct. It is always well to obey instincts. I think now that the instinct which made me speak to you in the first place was this instinct to tell you. But it is not a tragic story or even exciting. I am rather well known in the community where I live. I am what we call in America a self-made man. I come from the people—not from ignorance and crime and sensuality, but from the real people—who think, who aspire, who advance, who work and take pleasure and pride in their work, the people who have built our republic which will perish if they decline.”
He hesitated, then went on with increasing energy: “I am a clergyman. I went into the ministry because I ardently believed in it, saw in it an opportunity to be a leader of men in the paths which I hoped it would help me to follow. I have been a clergyman for twenty-five years. And I have ceased to believe that which I teach. Louder than I can shout to my congregation, louder than my conscience can shout to me, a voice continually gives me the lie.” He threw out his arm with a gesture that suggested a torrent flinging aside a dam. “I preach the goodness of God, and I never make a tour among the poor of my parish that I do not doubt it. I preach the immortality of the soul, and I never look out upon a congregation and remember what an infinite multitude of those same commonplace, imperfect types there have been, that I do not think: ‘It is ridiculous to say that man, the weak, the insignificant, the deformity, is an immortal being, each individual worth preserving through eternity.’ I preach the conventional code of morals, and——”