“That's what I tell him,” exclaimed his wife.
“But he persists in thinking, doesn't he, that he is a poor sinner?”
“He thinks it too much,” she laughed.
“Yes, yes,” he said, as much to himself as to us, “a minister ought to be a fighter!”
It was beautiful, the boyish flush which now came into his face and the light that came into his eyes. I should never have identified him with the Black Spectre of the afternoon.
“Why,” said I, “you ARE a fighter; you're fighting the greatest battle in the world today—the only real battle—the battle for the spiritual view of life.”
Oh, I knew exactly what was the trouble with his religion—at least the religion which, under the pressure of that church he felt obliged to preach! It was the old, groaning, denying, resisting religion. It was the sort of religion which sets a man apart and assures him that the entire universe in the guise of the Powers of Darkness is leagued against him. What he needed was a reviving draught of the new faith which affirms, accepts, rejoices, which feels the universe triumphantly behind it. And so whenever the minister told me what he ought to be—for he too sensed the new impulse—I merely told him he was just that. He needed only this little encouragement to unfold.
“Yes,” said he again, “I am the real moral leader here.”
At this I saw Mrs. Minister nodding her head vigorously.
“It's you,” she said, “and not Mr. Nash, who should lead this community.”