The eyes stopped at a point on the page. The lips were pressed tightly together.
David rose and walked quietly out of the room. After he had closed the door behind him and put his foot on the stairs, he stopped and with fresh determination reopened the door. His father had shut the Bible, laid it on the floor at the side of his chair, and was standing in the middle of the room with his eyes on the door through which David had passed. He pointed to his son to be seated, and resumed his chair. He drew his penknife from his pocket and slowly trimmed the ravellings from his shirt-cuffs, blowing them off his wrists. David saw that his hands were trembling violently. The tragedy in the poor action cut him to the heart and he threw himself remorsefully into the midst of things.
"Father, I know I have disappointed you! Know it as well as you do; but I could not have done differently."
"YOU not believe in Christianity! YOU not believe the Bible!"
The suppressed enraged voice summed up again the old contemptuous opinion.
The young man felt that there was another than himself whom it wounded.
"Sir, you must not speak to me with that feeling! Try to see that I am as sincere as you are. As to the goodness of my mind, I did not derive it from myself and am not to blame. I have only made an earnest and an honest use of what mind was given me. But I have not relied upon it alone. There are great men, some of the greatest minds of the world, who have been my teachers and determined my belief."
"All your life you had the word of God as your teacher and you believed it. Now these men tell you not to believe it and you believe them. And then you complain that I do not think more highly of you."
"Father," cried David, "there is one man whose name is very dear to us both. The blood of that man is in me as it is in you. Sir, it is your grandfather. Do you remember what the church of his day did with him? Do you forget that, standing across the fields yonder, is the church he himself built to freedom of opinion in religious matters? I grew up, not under the shadow of that church, for it casts none, but in the light of it. I have seen many churches worship there. I have had before me, from the time I could remember, my great-grandfather's words: they seemed to me the voice of God by whom all men were created, and the spirit of Christ by whom, as you believe, men are to be saved."
The younger man stopped and waited in vain for the older one to reply. But his father also waited, and David went on:—