"Yes, there should," he replied; "oh, yes, certainly there should. But it should be done as it was by Christ, to whom all were with Him who were not against Him, and with a feeling that we should share all we know, and help each other to find out the best way. Not by rudely wrenching from the heathen, as we call him, all his immemorial moral standards, which, if you study them closely, are often found, rough as they are, to be thoroughly effective and serviceable, and giving him nothing in their places except outworn myths, and senseless hymns, and a patter of Scripture phrases that he can't possibly make head or tail of. That, I often think, is beginning the work of salvation by turning him from a religious man into an irreligious one. Your Church creed," he went on, "is just the garment of religion, and you wear finely-woven stuffs while the blacks wear blankets and 'possum-skins; they are all little systems that have their day and cease to be--that change and change as the fashion of the world changes. But the spirit of man--the indestructible intelligence that makes him apprehend the mystery of his existence and of the great Power that surrounds it--which in the early stages makes him cringe and fear, and later on to love and trust--that is the _body_. That is religion, as I take it. It is in the nature of man, and not to be given or taken away. Only the more freely we let that inner voice speak and guide us, the better we are, and the better we make the world and help things on. That's my creed, Elizabeth. You confuse things," he went on, after a pause, during which she kept an attentive silence, "when you confound religion and churchism together, as if they were identical. I have given up churchism, in your sense, because, though I have hunted the churches through and through, one after another, I have found in them no adequate equipment for the work of my life. The world has gone on, and they have not gone on. The world has discovered breechloaders, so to speak, and they go to the field with the old blunderbusses of centuries ago. Centuries!--of the prehistoric ages, it seems, now. My dear, I have lived over forty years--did you know I was so old as that?--seeking and striving to get hold of what I could in the way of a light and a guide to help me to make the best of my life and to do what little I might to better the world and brighten the hard lot of the poor and miserable. Is that giving up religion? I am not a churchman--I would be if I could, it is not my fault--but if I can't accept those tests, which revolt the reason and consciousness of a thinking man, am I therefore irreligious? _Am_ I, Elizabeth?" "You bewilder me," she said; "I have never made these distinctions. I have been taught in the Church--I have found comfort there and help. I am afraid to begin to question the things that I have been taught--I should get lost altogether, trying to find a new way."