"No," said Wingfold, "we have not had our turn, and you have been having yours for a far longer time than we. But if, as you profess, you are _doing_ the truth you see, it belongs to my belief that you will come to see the truth you do not see. Christianity is not a failure; for to it mainly is the fact owing that here is a class of men which, believing in no God, yet believes in duty toward men. Look here: if Christianity be the outcome of human aspiration, the natural growth of the human soil, is it not strange it should be such an utter failure as it seems to you? and as such a natural growth, it must be a failure, for if it were a success, must not you be the very one to see it? If it is false, it is worthless, or an evil: where then is your law of development, if the highest result of that development is an evil to the nature and the race?" "I do not grant it the highest result," said Faber. "It is a failure--a false blossom, with a truer to follow." "To produce a superior architecture, poetry, music?" "Perhaps not. But a better science." "Are the architecture and poetry and music parts of the failure?" "Yes--but they are not altogether a failure, for they lay some truth at the root of them all. Now we shall see what will come of turning away from every thing we do not _know_." "That is not exactly what you mean, for that would be never to know any thing more. But the highest you have in view is immeasurably below what Christianity has always demanded of its followers." "But has never got from them, and never will. Look at the wars, the hatreds, to which your _gospel_ has given rise! Look at Calvin and poor Servetus! Look at the strifes and divisions of our own day! Look at the religious newspapers!" "All granted. It is a chaos, the motions of whose organization must be strife. The spirit of life is at war with the spasmatical body of death. If Christianity be not still in the process of development, it is the saddest of all failures." "The fact is, Wingfold, your prophet would have been King of the race if He had not believed in a God." "I dare not speak the answer that rises to my lips," said Wingfold. "But there is more truth in what you say than you think, and more of essential lie also. My answer is, that the faith of Jesus in His God and Father is, even now, saving me, setting me free from my one horror, selfishness; making my life an unspeakable boon to me, letting me know its roots in the eternal and perfect; giving me such love to my fellow, that I trust at last to love him as Christ has loved me. But I do not expect you to understand me. He in whom I believe said that a man must be born again to enter into the kingdom of Heaven." The doctor laughed. "You then _are_ one of the double-born, Wingfold?" he said. "I believe, I think, I hope so," replied the curate, very gravely. "And you, Mr. Bevis?" "I don't know. I wish. I doubt," answered the rector, with equal solemnity.