"Well, you do not know from whence your life comes, and it goes after a short course, to lose itself with many others in the great stream that reaches--at last, and is lost in--the Infinite." The Doctor seemed interested. Dan continued, half talking to himself: "It is not for you to waste your time in useless speculation as to the unknowable source of your life-stream, or in seeking to trace it in the ocean. It is enough for you that it is, and that, while it runs its brief course, it is yours to make it yield its blessings. For this you must train your hand and eye and brain--you must be in life a fisherman." "Very well done," murmured the Doctor, "for a preacher. Stick to the knowable things, and don't stick at the unknowable; that is my law and my gospel." Dan retorted, "Now let's watch the practitioner make a cast." "Humph! Why don't you stop it, boy?" "Stop what?" Dan sat up. The other pointed to the great basin of water that--though the stream rushed away in such volume and speed--was never diminished, being constantly renewed from its invisible, unknown source. The young man shook his head, awed by the contemplation of the mighty, hidden power. And the Doctor--poet now--said: "No more can the great stream of love, that is in the race for the race and that finds expression in sympathy and service, be finally stopped. Fed by hidden, eternal sources it will somehow find its way to the surface. Checked and hampered, for the moment, by obstacles of circumstances or conditions, it is not stopped, for no circumstance can touch the source. And love will keep coming--breaking down or rising over the barrier, it may be--cutting for itself new channels, if need be. For every Judge Strong and his kind there is a Hope Farwell and her kind. For every cast-iron, ecclesiastical dogma there is a living, growing truth." Dan's sermon the next day, given in place of the one announced, did not please the whole of his people. "It was all very fine and sounded very pretty," said Martha, "but I would like to know, Brother Matthews, where does the church come in?" CHAPTER XX. COMMON GROUND "'But we will find common ground,' he exclaimed. 'Look here, we have already found it! This garden--Denny's garden!'" The following Tuesday morning Dan was at work bright and early in Denny's garden. Many of the good members of Memorial Church would have said that Dan might better have been at work in his study. The ruling classes in this congregation, that theoretically had no ruling classes, were beginning to hint among themselves of a humiliation beyond expression at the spectacle, now becoming so common, of their minister working with his coat off like an ordinary laboring man. He should have more respect for the dignity of the cloth. At least, if he had no pride of his own, he should have more regard for the feelings of his membership. Besides this they did not pay him to work in anybody's garden.