“Samuel, this is no place to discuss the question!” broke in Dr. Vince.
“But why not, sir? The guilty men are high in the councils of this church. They hold the church up to disgrace before all the world. And this is the church of Christ, sir!”
“But yours is not the way to go about it, boy!” exclaimed Mr. Hamerton—who was alarmed because Samuel kept looking at him.
“Why not?” cried Samuel. “Did not Christ drive out the money-changers from the temple with whips?”
This was an uncomfortable saying. There was a pause after it, as if everyone were willing to let his neighbor speak first.
“Are we not taught to follow Christ's example, Dr. Vince?” asked the boy.
“Hardly in that sense, Samuel,” said the terrified doctor. “Christ was God. And we can hardly be expected—”
“Ah, that is a subterfuge!” broke in Samuel, passionately. “You say that Christ was God, and so you excuse yourself from doing what He tells you to! But I don't believe that He was God in any such sense as that. He was a man, like you and me! He was a poor man, who suffered and starved! And the rich men of His time despised Him and spit upon Him and crucified Him!”
Here a new member of the vestry entered the arena. This was the venerable Mr. Curtis, who looked like a statue of the Olympian Jove. “Boy,” he said sternly, “you object to being put out of the church—and yet you confess to being an infidel.”
“I may be an infidel, Mr. Curtis,” replied the other, quickly; “but I never paid two hundred dollars to Slattery so that the police would let me block the sidewalks of the town.”