"That," replied Lawyer Scott, evidently pleased by the compliment but puzzled by the question, "cannot be answered as easily as it is asked, and I must beg the gentleman's indulgence until I have time to prepare my case."
Mr. Buffle, founder of the class, was next in order, and admitted that he could not see that Jesus, being a clear-headed man, could ever have meant anything but what he said. He, Mr. Buffle, always said what he meant, no matter whether he was talking to preachers, shippers, or the deck-hands on his own boats; he had found that if a man said exactly what he meant, the stupidest of people could understand him, while smarter people needed no more. He would consider himself a fool if he talked over the head of any one who was listening to him, and of course Jesus couldn't have been foolish. He was very glad, though, to listen to the many different views that had been advanced on the subject; they proved just what he had always believed, that men would learn more about a thing by hearing all sides of it than he could from the smartest talker alive who knew only one side. He liked the liberality of the members of the class; it was what he called liberality, to listen to various views courteously, even if you couldn't accept them all or make them agree.
The question had now reached Dr. Fahrenglohz, and the members, both liberal and narrow, prepared for something terrible. They knew, in general, that he believed nothing that they themselves did; how then could his own ideas be anything but dreadful?
The doctor looked mildly from behind his very convex glasses, and said:
"Jesus was a mystic. From the spiritual plane on which he lived it was impossible for him to descend. He could say only that which he believed. Pure-minded and wholly regardless of ordinary earthly interests, he could not be a utilitarian, in the vulgar acceptation of the word. What thought he, what thinks any philosopher, of how his theories may affect the world? It is his duty to discover the truth, help or hinder whomsoever it may, and to speak it as he understands it, not in such fragments as other people may comprehend it. What did Buddha and Brahma? They spoke, they gave forth that which originated with them."
"And what did it all amount to?" asked Squire Woodhouse. "Business don't amount to a row of pins among their followers, according to the Missionary Herald, and virtue is worse off yet."
The doctor smiled condescendingly. "'He that hath ears to hear, let him hear' as your prophet says. Is virtue and good business always to be found with those who sit under the words of Jesus?"
"N-no," said the Squire, "and that's just what we're driving at. If the words are understood—and followed—men can't help being good and successful."
"And so there is all the more need of careful, prayerful study of the words," remarked Mr. Prymm.
There was general disappointment, among those who had yet to speak, at the lack of any startling heresy in the doctor's utterances. Builder Stott in particular had felt that he might have an opportunity of defending the faith which he so unhesitatingly accepted, at no matter what intellectual difficulties, by abusing some heterodox utterance of the doctor; but the doctors statements had seemed to him to resemble either a sphere—and a hollow one—from which all projectiles would glance harmlessly, or mere thin air, in which there was nothing to aim at. So he could do nothing but assert his own orthodoxy.