"My young friend," said Doctor June, "will you forgive me for saying that it is fairly amazing to me how the church of God continues to use the terms of barbarism? We talk of the peace that passeth understanding, and yet we keep on employing metaphors of blood-red war. What does the modern church want of a helmet and a sword, if I may ask? Even rhetorically?"
"The Christian life is an eternal warfare against the forces of sin, is it not?" asked the Reverend Arthur Bliss in surprise.
"Let me suggest," said Doctor June, "that all good life is an eternal surrender to the forces of good. There's a difference."
The visitor from the city smiled very reverently.
"I see, sir," he said, "that you are one of those wonderful non-combatants. You are by nature sanctified—and that I can well believe."
"I am by nature a miserable old sinner," rejoined the doctor, warmly. "Often—often I would enjoy a fine round Elizabethan oath—note how that single adjective condones my poor taste. But I hold that good is inflowing and that it possesses whom it may possess. If a man is too busy fighting, it may pass him by."
"But surely, sir," said the young clergyman, "you agree with me that a man wins his way into the kingdom of light by both a staff and a sword?"
"You will perhaps forgive me for agreeing with nothing of the sort," said the doctor, mildly; "I hold that a man takes his way to the light by grasping whatever the Lord puts in his hand—a hammer, a rope, a pen—and grasping it hard."
"But the ungifted—what of the ungifted?" cried the Reverend Arthur Bliss.
"In this sense, there are none," said Doctor June, briefly.