"Oh, get out!" exclaimed the pillar of orthodoxy. "You needn't take it that way. Of course what I ask him to do is only right: if I didn't think so, I wouldn't ask him." "Of course not, brother. But think a moment: do you really believe that any form of professional pride would persuade that young man--proud as Lucifer, and just as conceited and headstrong, a young man who always has argued against religion and against every belief you and I hold dear--to rise for prayers in an inquiry meeting, and afterwards say it was the Christian life of Sam Kimper,--a man whom a high-born fellow like Bartram must believe as near the animals as humanity ever is,--to say it was the Christian life of Sam Kimper that convinced him of the supernatural origin and saving power of Christianity?" "I can't believe he put it that way: there must be something else behind it. I'm going to find out for myself and do it at once, too. This sort of nonsense must be stopped. Why, if men go to taking everything Jesus Christ said just as He said it, everything in the world in the way of business is going to be turned upside down." Away went Deacon Quickset to Bartram's office, and was so fortunate as to find the lawyer in. He went right at his subject: "Well, young man, you've been in nice business, haven't you?--trying to go up to the throne of grace right behind a jail-bird, while the leaders and teachers whom the Lord has selected have been spurned by you for years!" Reynolds Bartram was too new a convert to have changed his old self and manner to any great extent: so he flushed angrily, and retorted,-- "One thief is about as good as another, Deacon Quickset." Then it was the deacon's turn to look angry. The two men faced each other for a moment with flashing eyes, lowering brows, and hard-set jaws. The deacon was the first to recover himself: he took a chair, and said,-- "Maybe I haven't heard the story rightly. What I came around for was to get it from first hands. Would you mind telling me?" "I suppose you allude to my conversion?" "Yes," said the deacon, with a look of doubt, "I suppose that's what we will have to call it, for want of a better word." "It is a very short story," said Bartram, now entirely calm, as he leaned against his desk and folded his arms. "Like every other man with any brains, I've always been interested in religion, intellectually, and have had to believe that if it was right, as I heard it talked, it had sometimes got away from its Founder in a manner for which there seemed to be no excuse. Everything was being taught by the servants, nothing by the Master. When I want to know your wishes, deacon, about any matter in which we are mutually interested, I do not go to your back door and inquire of your servants: I go to you, direct. But when people--you among the number--have talked to me about religion, they've always talked Peter and Paul and James and John,--never Jesus."