“If that be what baptism means—to put my soul into the hands of that thing they call the Church, and let it mould me like wax—to defile myself with all the idols and all the follies that I see there—I will not be baptised. I will believe without it. And if He ask me at the Day of Doom why I did not obey His command given in Galilee, I shall say, ‘Lord, I could not do it without disobeying Thy first command, given amid the thunders of Sinai.’ If men drive me to do thus, it will not be my sin, but theirs.”
“Well, I don’t know!” answered David, in evident perplexity. “I suppose you could be baptised, with nothing more—but I don’t know any priest that would do it.”
“Would you do it?”
“Oh, I daren’t!”
“David, your religion is very queer.”
“What’s the matter?” asked David in astonishment.
“The other day, when I told you I was in a great slough, you did not advise me to go and ask those gaudy images to help me out of it; you spoke of nobody but the Lord. Now that we come to talk about images, you flounder about as if you did not know what to say.”
“Well, don’t you see, I know one o’ them two, but I’ve only been told the other.”
“Oh yes, I see. You are not the first who has had one religion for sunshiny weather, and another for rainy days; only that with you—different from most people—you wear your best robe in the storm.”
David rubbed his face upon the sleeve of his jacket, as if he wished to rub some more discrimination into his brains.