“I tell you, you should read your Bibles,” broke in a voice, like a heavy bell. The sentiment seemed _mal à propos_; but the voice was Lionel Derwent’s, and it continued speaking without the slightest tremor of consciousness that it was producing a sensation. “You are none of you Christians--not one.” Derwent was addressing Mrs. Gower; but, in the sudden silence, his remark seemed addressed to the entire company. The remark did not seem to offend anybody, coming from so handsome a man with so sweet a voice; but there was quite a little chorus of shocked dissent. “Do you suppose,” said Derwent, gravely, “that the Christian church, when it reorganized society, meant--this sort of thing?” And with a sweeping glance, that was as definite as a wave of the hand, but not so discourteous, Derwent indicated the table and its brilliant occupants. No one seemed quite ready to defend herself, as there manifested; as for the men, they sat all withdrawn from the fray, with the feeling that, as they made no religious pretences, it did not concern them. Perhaps Miss Lenoir’s reply served the purpose as well as any other. “But surely, Mr. Derwent, we are all church members,” said she, simply. “The church itself is not Christian,” said he, as simply. “I doubt if it ever has been, since it got established in Rome, it or its Eastern and Western successors. The fact is, the only two high religions of the world have both rested on the abnegation of self: the Buddhist, by quietism and annihilation; the Christian, by action and sacrifice. But the Jews and Mahometans founded their ethics upon the development of self, upon visible rewards, slaves and flocks and herds, personal aggrandizement; and these things they obtained by wars of conquest, by the church militant, as rewards of the holy zeal that made converts by physical victory. Then Christ came; and it was his only work to remove this idea, to change this life, not as a king of a victorious people, but as a vessel of divine spirit. But this one work and faith of Christ, this only thing that made his teachings new, regenerative of the world, is just alone what all our churches, Protestant and Catholic, unite in evading, in dodging, in interpreting away. The one thing they will not follow Christ in is his unselfishness.” “But we cannot all be saints and martyrs,” said Mrs. Gower. “If we were all Christians, there would be no martyrs,” said Derwent. “I think,” said Wemyss, softly, as if he were studying the painting of a fan, “I think that Mr. Derwent is historically right. Such was undoubtedly the pure doctrine, the face of the pale Christ as it first appeared, palsying the hand of art and civilization, unnerving the arm of war, bleaching life of all color and flower, whelming the sunlight of Greece in the pale artificial cloister, quenching the light of the world in an unsane, self-wrought asceticism.