"Perhaps it's because they never talk about it excepting at the beginning," said Mr. Buffle, "and they're anxious to begin at the bottom, as men have to do in business and everything else, if they really want to learn. I begin to think it's a subject about which there isn't much known. It's often seemed to me in churches that men are very much like the apprentices in my ship-yard; the first thing these boys want to do is to paint the names and designs on the paddle-boxes, though that's the very last thing we generally attend to. Not one in a hundred of them are ever anxious to know how keels are laid and hulls are shaped."
"That's only business; isn't it, Lottson?" asked Captain Maile. "Business and religion are two very different things, and a smart man like you, Buffle, ought to know it, and not go about arranging for Sunday exercises to torment men into thinking what they ought to do, instead of letting them enjoy a day of holy rest and delight in the contemplation of what they're going to get when they can't stay here any longer to get for themselves."
Mr. Lottson turned abruptly away, and remarked to Mr. Prymm that Captain Maile was the most hardened scoffer he had ever known. He also informed Prymm of the movement in favor of a reconsideration of the lesson of the previous Sunday.
"I shall oppose it," said Mr. Prymm with more than his ordinary decision. "I entered the class with the hope of learning something of God's will as revealed by the Scriptures; but if it is the desire of the remaining members, or a majority of them, that we shall linger for weeks over single verses, I shall find it more convenient and profitable to devote the corresponding hour of every Sabbath to private study and contemplation."
"I suppose," said President Lottson, noting the approach of Judge Cottaway and Deacon Bates elbow to elbow, the latter looking very solemn and the judge exceedingly bored, "I suppose it will be like Cottaway to insinuate that the matter should be talked over and over again until doomsday. It takes a lawyer to string a subject out until he doesn't know the end of it when he sees it."
"Lawyers like the judge have some faculties which we might imitate with profit," said Mr. Buffle. "They believe in listening to all the evidence and determining accordingly. Evidence seems a something which the members of this class are afraid of, and practice based upon it is still more terrifying. Ah, good morning, judge—we want to have another talk next Sunday on the subject of yesterday's lesson, and knowing your experience in sifting evidence, we would be very grateful if you would charge your conscience with the case, and become responsible for it."
"If the rule can be suspended, I shall be glad to throw upon it such light as I can," said the judge.
"We were talking, gentlemen," said Deacon Bates, "upon the spiritual significance of righteousness. I suggested, and the judge was pleased to agree with me, that righteousness had a spiritual as well as a merely moral significance."
"It certainly has," said President Lottson promptly, "and if for a while we could divest ourselves of the materialistic notions which prevail as badly in the Church as out of it, we would obtain some new light on this subject which is so puzzling when considered only by the human mind. We would realize that with the prince of this world Christ has nothing to do; that while in the world we are under the dominion of the world."
"And that our real life does not begin until we are with God," said Deacon Bates, by way of supplement. "This world is a place of preparation for another, and it is what we are to do and be in that blessed sphere that Christ came to teach us. The things of this world are really the unreal—only the things which are unseen are eternal. How much righteousness had the crucified thief who rebuked his fellow for reviling Christ? Yet to him were spoken the words which every Christian longs to hear, 'This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.' Belief in Christ, longing for him and his glory, are what should occupy our thoughts while on earth."