“What do you propose? To turn temperance lecturer, and that sort of thing? I suppose you’ll be switching off your religious services into prohibition caucuses, and so forth.” “I propose nothing of the kind. I am not a politician. I am a preacher of the Christian religion.” “I always knew you were eccentric, of course, Bayard. Everybody knows that. But I never expected to see you leading such a singular life. I never took you for this sort of fanatic. It seems so--common for a man of your taste and culture, and there can be no doubt that it is unwise, from every point of view, even from your own, I should think. I don’t deny that your work impressed me, what I saw of it to-night. Your gifts tell--even here. It is a pity to have them misapplied. Now, what was your motive in that outbreak to-night? I take it, it was the first time you had tackled the subject.” “To my shame--yes. It was the first time. I have had reasons to look into it, lately--that’s all. You see, my ignorance on the subject was colossal, to start in. We were not taught such things in the Seminary. Cesarea does as well as any of them--but no curriculum recognizes Job Slip. Oh, when I think about it--Predestination, foreordination, sanctification, election, and botheration,--and never a lesson on the Christian socialism of our day, not a lecture to tell us how to save a poor, lost woman, how to reform a drunkard, what to do with gamblers and paupers and thieves, and worse, how to apply what we believe to common life and common sense--how to lift miserable creatures, scrambling up, and falling back into the mud as fast as they can scramble--people of no religion, no morals, no decency, no hope, no joy--who never see the inside of a church”-- “They ought to,” replied Fenton severely. “That’s their fault, not ours. And all seminaries have a course on Pastoral Theology.”