"Like what?"
"Why, that followed out that kind of talk. I know enough about the Bible to know they are mighty scarce. I'd go to Jerusalem on foot to see a real one. Where's the folks, I'd like to know, that live up to half of the things it says in the Bible? Why, they even say it can't be done, and that's why it seems all bosh to me. What was the use of putting it in there if it can't be done?"
Here was one who had evidently thought, and thought seriously about these things. Is there a boy of seventeen in our country who has not? Flossy felt timid. How should she answer the sharp, sarcastic words? He had been studying inconsistencies, and had grown bitter. The others looked on curiously; they had a certain kind of pride in Rich. He was their genius who held all the teachers at bay with his ingenious tongue. But Flossy had been at a morning meeting in Chautauqua where there was talk on this very subject. It came back to her now.
"As for being able to do it," she said, quickly, "I don't feel sure that we have anything to do with that, until we have convinced ourselves that we have been just as good as we possibly could. Honestly, now, do you think you have been?"
"No," said Rich., promptly; "of course not. And, what is more, I never pretended that I was."
"Well, I know I haven't been; I am perfectly certain that in a hundred ways I could have done better. Why, there is nothing that I could not have improved upon if I had tried. So by our own confessions what right have you and I to stumble over not being able to be perfect, so long as we have not begun to be as near it as we could?"
How was he to answer this?
"Oh, well," he said, "I haven't made any pretensions; I'm talking about those who have."
"That's exactly like myself; and, as nearly as I can see, we both belong to the class who knew our duty, and had nothing to do with it. Now, I want to tell you that I have decided not to stand with that class any longer."
Flossy paused an instant, caught her breath, and a rich flush spread over her pretty face. This was her first actual "witnessing" outside of the narrow limits of her intimate three friends who all sympathized.