Miriam was the first to speak. “Daddy,” she said, “I know I'm stupid. But are we still Christians?”
“I want you to think for yourselves.”
“But I mean,” said Miriam, “are we—something like Quakers—a sort of very broad Christians?”
“You are what you choose to be. If you want to keep in the church, then you must keep in the church. If you feel that the Christian doctrine is alive, then it is alive so far as you are concerned.”
“But the creeds?” asked Clementina.
He shook his head. “So far as Christianity is defined by its creeds, I am not a Christian. If we are going to call any sort of religious feeling that has a respect for Jesus, Christianity, then no doubt I am a Christian. But so was Mohammed at that rate. Let me tell you what I believe. I believe in God, I believe in the immediate presence of God in every human life, I believe that our lives have to serve the Kingdom of God....”
“That practically is what Mr. Chasters calls 'The Core of Truth in Christianity.'”
“You have been reading him?”
“Eleanor lent me the book. But Mr. Chasters keeps his living.”
“I am not Chasters,” said Scrope stiffly, and then relenting: “What he does may be right for him. But I could not do as he does.”