“Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of His Spirit, are not pleasant to God, for as much as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ; neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or deserve grace of congruity: yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.”
There was some discrepancy here between the works and the faith of Clark and the works and the faith of Manning. The Reverend Smith Boyd made no doubt that the Great Judge would find little difficulty in distinguishing between these two men, and in deciding upon their respective merits; but that was not the point which disturbed the young rector. It was the attitude of the church towards these men, and the fact that he must uphold that attitude. It was absurd! The Reverend Smith Boyd was a devout and earnest and consistent believer, not merely in the existence of God, but in his greatness and his power and his glory, his justice and his mercy and his wisdom; but the Reverend Smith Boyd suddenly made the startling discovery that he was not preaching God! He was preaching the church and its creed!
Started, now, he went through the thirty-nine Articles of Religion, one by one, slowly, thoughtfully, and with a quickened conscience. Reason knocked at the door of Faith, and entered; but it did not drive out Faith. They sat side by side, but each gave something to the other. No, rather, Reason stripped the mask from Faith, tore away the disguising cloak, and displayed her in all her simple beauty, sweet, and gentle, and helpful. What was the faith he had been called upon to teach? Faith in the thirty-nine Articles of Religion! This had been cleverly substituted by the organisers of an easy profession, for faith in God, which latter was too simple of comprehension for the purposes of any organisation.
For a long time the Reverend Smith Boyd sat in the corner pew, and when he had closed the book, all that had been behind the wall of his mind came out, and was sorted into heaps, and the bad discarded and the good retained. He found a wonderful relief in that. He had lived with a secret chamber in his heart, hidden even from himself, and now that he had opened the door, he felt free. Above him, around him, within him, was the presence of God, infinite, tender, easy of understanding; and from that God, his God, the one which should walk with him through life his friend and comforter and counsellor, he stripped every shred of pretence and worthless form and useless ceremony!
“I believe in God the Creator; the Maker of my conscience; my Friend and Father.” The creed of Gail!
He walked out into the broad centre aisle, now, amid the solemn pews and the avenue of slender columns, and beneath graceful arches which pointed heavenward the aspirations of the human soul. Before the altar he paused and gazed up at the beautiful Henri Dupres crucifix. The soft light from one of the clerestory windows flooded in on Him, and the compassionate eyes of the Son of God seemed bent upon the young rector in benign sympathy. For a moment the rector stood, tall and erect, then he stretched forth his arms:
“I know that my Redeemer liveth!” he said, and sank to his knees.
Two high points he had kept in his faith, points never to be shaken; the existence of his Creator, his mercy and his love, and the Divinity of his Son, who died, was crucified and buried, and on the third day arose to ascend unto Heaven. Reason could not destroy that citadel in a man born to the necessity of Faith! Man must believe some one thing. If it was as easy, as he had once set forth, to believe in the biblical account of the creation of the world as to believe in a pre-existent chaos, out of which evoluted the spirit of life, and all its marvels of growing trees and flying birds and reasoning men, it was as easy to go one step further, and add the Son to the Father and to the Holy Ghost! Even chaos must have been created!
Fully satisfied, the Reverend Smith Boyd walked into the vestry, and wrote his resignation from the rectorship of Market Square Church, for he could no longer teach, and preach, Faith—in the thirty-nine Articles of Religion! Within his grasp he had held a position of wealth, of power, of fame! He scarcely considered their loss; and in the ease with which he relinquished them, he knew that he was self-absolved from the charge of using his conscience as a ladder of ambition! If personal vanity had entered into his desire to build the new cathedral, it had been incidental, not fundamental. It made him profoundly happy to know this with positiveness.
He called up the house of Jim Sargent, and asked for Gail.