"And you forget your 'grand broad view' of 'universal brotherhood' in sympathising with one at the expense of another," said Guy. "Consistency, I suppose, is too lowly a study for your lofty school."
The stranger burst into a laugh as he replied,—
"You caught me there, I admit, but do not take me for an illustration of my 'school'; I am very far from an accomplished scholar yet."
"I am glad to believe it," said Guy, kindly and frankly: "your heart is not satisfied, and will not allow you to be as comfortable as you pretend. Listen to it: it knows God is saying, 'My Son, give me thine heart,' and inwardly feels, too, that only He knows what to do with it."
"Is it true," asked the stranger, "that the Falconers' ancestry belonged to the Catholic Church?"
"Not since the Reformation," said Guy, rather struck with the terms of the inquiry. "Their chaplain became a Protestant, and soon the family and retainers followed, for he read daily from the word of God, and he found no Popery there. The sexton will be delighted to show you the remains of the old Bible that was chained to the reading-desk, and was listened to by the people who gathered from miles round the country. He can give you the history of those times, and of several relics of them for which he has great veneration."
"Relics! I thought Protestants ignored relics."
"Perhaps these are allowable," replied Guy, smiling, "giving special significance to words you must know very well: 'We have heard with our ears, and our fathers have declared unto us the noble works that Thou didst in their days, and in the old time before them,' delivering us from persecution and error, and enabling martyrs to be faithful unto death. It is a piece of an instrument of torture, and was used upon the person of one detected reading that very Bible."
"Another school of thought, you see. Those worthies thought it dangerous to allow the unlearned to read the Bible for themselves; then came the pugnacious resolve to have it and keep it and understand it as each man pleases; and presently you will be able to pave all our towns with Bibles that nobody cares for!"
"If every good and right thing were to be set aside because some abuse it and few know its real value, what would our civilization come to?" said Guy. "But we are to remember that though the sower scattered his seed over the wayside, among stones and thorns 'some fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit.' So with our Bible: it is 'the word of the kingdom,' and cannot return void, but must accomplish that which God pleases, and prosper in the thing whereto He sends it."