“I quite agree with you,” said the preacher. “What is your church?” Bellair asked. “Well, the fact is, I haven’t one,” Fleury said with a smile. “Convictions somewhat similar to that which you have expressed have twice cost me my church. As the church puts it, I am a failure and not to be trusted with regular work----” “You are going out in the mission-service?” Bellair was now ashamed, because he had held the other a bit cheaply. The boyish face looked suddenly different to him, as Fleury said: “No--that is, I have ceased to expound theology. I have come out to make the thought and the act one.” Bellair was taking on a new conception. His question was a trifle automatic: “Did you talk out in meeting?” “Yes. There were a thousand years in the congregation. You know what I mean--only a few of our generation in method of mind.” “A sort of Seventeenth century average?” Bellair suggested. “Don’t misunderstand me. I was wrong, too,” Fleury declared. “Wrong, in the young man’s way of thinking himself right. You know we’re just as baneful when we are getting into a new world of thought as when we are not yet out of the old. It’s only after we have settled down and got accustomed to the place, that we’re reasonable. A man should be big enough to talk to all men, and appear everlastingly true to the least and the greatest. Truth is big enough for that. I had only a different trail from theirs, and wanted them all to come to mine, forgetting that the trails are only far apart at the bottom of the mountain--that they all converge at the top----” “You had to be honest with yourself,” Bellair said thoughtfully. “That’s just what I thought, but maybe there was a lie in that,” Fleury answered. “It’s not so easy to be honest with one’s self and keep on using words for a living. The best way is to act----” “You’ve said something, Mr. Fleury.” And in his new respect for the other, Bellair wanted to make his view clearer. “It’s the old soil and seed story again,” he said. “It isn’t enough to get truth down to superb simplicity. The minds of men must be open beside. My objection to the Church is that it has separated religion from work and the week-day--tried to balance one day of sanctimoniousness against six days of mammon--taught men that heaven is to be reached in a high spiritual effusion because One has died for us. The fact is we’ve got to help ourselves to heaven.... Excuse me for being so communicative,” he added, “but what you said about putting down talk and taking up action interested me at once. I’ve a suspicion you won’t be long in finding something to do----” “I’m hoping just that.”