John Marvel held up his hand. "Stop! Not one word more from you. I am no longer your assistant. I have stood many things from you because I believed it was my duty to stand them, so long as I was in a position where I could be of service, and because I felt it my duty to obey you as my superior officer, but now that this connection is severed, I wish to say that I will not tolerate one more word or act of insolence from you."
"Insolence?" cried the rector. "Insolence? You are insolent yourself, sir. You do not know the meaning of the term."
"Oh! Yes, I know it," said John, who had cooled down after his sudden outbreak. "I have had cause to know it. I have been your assistant for two years. I bid you good morning, Dr. Capon." He turned and walked out, leaving the rector speechless with rage.
I do not mean in relating Dr. Capon's position in this interview to make any charge against others who might honestly hold the same view which he held as to the propriety of John Marvel's having requested Leo Wolffert to speak in his church, however much I myself might differ from that view, and however I might think in holding it they are tithing the mint, anise, and cumin, and overlooking the weightier matters of the law. My outbreak of wrath, when John Marvel told me of his interview with the rector, was due, not to the smallness of the rector's mind, but to the simple fact that he selected this as the basis of his charge, when in truth it was overshadowed in his mind by the fact that Leo Wolffert's address had aroused the ire of one of his leading parishioners, and that the doctor was thus guilty of a sham in bringing his charge, not because of the address, but because of the anger of his wealthy parishioner. Wolffert was savage in his wrath when he learned how John had been treated. "Your church is the church of the rich," he said to me; for he would not say it to John. And when I defended it and pointed to its work done among the poor, to its long line of faithful devoted workers, to its apostles and martyrs, to John Marvel himself, he said: "Don't you see that Dr. Caiaphas is one of its high-priests and is turning out its prophets? I tell you it will never prosper till he is turned out and the people brought in! Your Church is the most inconsistent in the world, and I wonder they do not see it. Its Head, whom it considers divine and worships as God, lived and died in a continual war against formalism and sacerdotalism, it was the foundation of all his teaching for which he finally suffered death at the hands of the priests. The imperishable truth in that teaching is that God is within you, and to be worshipped 'in spirit' and in truth; that not the temple made with hands, but the temple of the body is the one temple, and that the poor are his chosen people—the poor in heart are his loved disciples; yet your priests arrogate to themselves all that he suffered to overthrow. Your Dr. Capon is only Dr. Caiaphas, with a few slight changes, and presumes to persecute the true disciples precisely as his predecessors persecuted their master."
"He is not my Dr. Capon," I protested.
"Oh! well, he is the representative of the ecclesiasticism that crucifies spiritual freedom and substitutes form for substance. He 'makes broad his phylacteries and for a pretence makes long prayers.'"
"It appears to me that you are very fond of quoting the Bible, for an unbeliever," I said.
"I, an unbeliever! I, a Jew!" exclaimed Wolffert, whose eyes were sparkling. "My dear sir, I am the believer of the ages—I only do not believe that any forms established by men are necessary to bring men into communion with God—I refuse to believe selfishness, and arrogance, and blindness, when they step forth with bell, book, and candle, and say, obey us, or be damned. I refuse to worship a ritual, or a church. I will worship only God." He turned away with that detached air which has always struck me as something oriental.
As soon as it became known in his old parish that John had resigned he was called back there; but the solicitations of his poor parishioners that he should not abandon them in their troubles prevailed, and Wolffert and I united in trying to show him that his influence now was of great importance. Indeed, the workers among the poor of every church came and besought him to remain. Little Father Tapp, patting him on the shoulder, said, "Come to us, John, the Holy Father will make you a bishop." So he remained with his people and soon was given another small chapel under a less fashionable and more spiritual rector. I think Eleanor Leigh had something to do with his decision. I know that she was so urgent for him to remain that both Dr. Capon and I were given food for serious thought.