"Mr. Chairman," exclaimed Mr. Alleman (Principal of the Valley Rest Academy, and suspected of certain fashionable heresies), "I object. In our congregation--here in this small gathering, in fact--is a large sprinkling of gentlemen who are not members of the church, and who do not accept our creed, though they enjoy worshiping with us: Brother Humbletop's resolution, if put into effect, would exclude from the proposed teachings the very class of men that we profess to believe are most in need of religious instruction. The churches are so rigid that a thinking man can scarcely gain admission to them without lying, actually or constructively: don't let us, in a class like that proposed, follow the example of the Pharisees, those very flowers of orthodoxy--and 'lay on men's shoulders burdens grievous to be borne.' If our religion is what we claim it is, let us open our gates wide enough to admit every one who is at all interested to study God's ways as made known through the scriptures." "Don't trouble yourself," said Captain Maile, who was as dyspeptic in body as in mind, but was also a keen observer of human nature; "I don't see but saints need converting as badly as sinners do, and there's enough of _them_ to keep you busy. We sinners can find a gathering place somewhere else--perhaps the sexton will think the furnace-room the proper place for us--and we'll take Christian hospitality and great-heartedness as our first subject for discussion." "You won't do anything of the kind," exclaimed Squire Woodhouse, one of the old settlers who had joined himself to the Second Church to avoid being tormented about what some of the members of the First Church termed his rationalism. "You're going to meet with us, blow us up all you like, teach us anything you can, and make us better in any way you know how to. God Almighty's kingdom isn't any four-acre lot with a high stone wall and a whole string of warnings to trespassers; his kingdom takes in all out-doors; every man alive is his child, and got a right to come and go in his Father's house, even if he don't sit on the same style of chair or creep under the same kind of bedclothes that his brothers do. If he don't like the meat, or bread, or dessert that somebody else is eating, the table's so full of other good things that he _can't_ go hungry unless he insists upon it. There isn't one of you but's got more religion and brains than any of the twelve apostles ever had; but none of _them_ were ever turned out of _the_ Bible class, though one of them, who was a thief, was man enough to stay away of his own accord, and voluntarily go to judgment."