"Well, Kestern," he said, "don't think I mind in the least your saying what you think. Besides you are flattering; I confess no one yet even thought he saw a potential missionary in me. But however tight you sit to your dogmas, I should give ear to the other side also, if I were you. After all, you are up here for that, aren't you? And now I'm walking with the Master this afternoon, and I fear I've got to go. Come again sometime. Look in any evening. If I'm busy, I'll say so. And bring me some more verses. Good-bye."
Paul, on his feet, ventured however one more direct question. "Good-bye, sir," he said, "but it worries me. Do tell me one thing. Do you honestly mean that, as you read your Bible, you do not think Christ dogmatic?"
"Honestly, I do not," said Tressor, and nodded kindly. "Good-bye," he said again.
(2)
It was Manning who enlightened Paul on the other's attitude, however, much later in the term. Spring had made an unexpectedly early appearance, and they took a Canader to paddle up the Backs. The sunlight lay soft and lovely on the mellow walls, the slow-moving black river, the willows just breaking into new green, and the trim lawns. Paul as yet, however, had not begun to attempt to find refuge in beauty and to rest his soul upon it. He even surveyed the Spring flowers on the banks of Trinity Fellows' garden with dissatisfaction. Tressor's kindly but obviously unmoved criticism of a rapture of his read to him the night before on the parallel of natural and supernatural resurrection, had occasioned more immediately his present attitude. "I don't understand it at all," he remarked to Manning, digging his paddle ferociously into the water and forcing his companion to lean hard on his in the stern to escape striking the centre arch of Trinity Bridge.
"Well, let us avoid a collision anyway," said Manning good-humouredly. "But look here, Paul, Tressor's position is simple enough. You read the Bible as if it were yesterday's Times; he doesn't. He considers, first, the difficulty of choosing between the variations in the many texts; then the difficulty of getting back behind fifth-century manuscripts to the original; then the difficulty of knowing how much the original owes to the unscientific mind and Eastern imagination of the writer. Heavens! You read history! Do you not do the same thing with Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and all the rest of the musty stuff? Well, then, in his mind the Christ shrinks to shadowy proportions. He remains possibly the most interesting and arresting figure in history, but that is all. You see, resurrection or no, all those events are nineteen hundred years behind us."
Paul leant back in his canoe and forgot to paddle. "Oh," he said at last, "I see."
The other looked at him curiously. "You're an odd fish, Paul," he said. "What do you see?"
"I see the difference between Tressor's Christianity and—and my father's."
"Which is?"