"Are you, too, going to quote Scripture against me? I am glad to find that your studies extend to St. Paul." "To tell you the truth, your sermon last Sunday puzzled me. I could not comprehend (on your showing) how Paul got that wonderful influence over those pagans which he evidently had; and as how to get influence is a very favourite study of mine, I borrowed the book when I went home, and read for myself; and the matter at last seemed clear enough, on Paul's own showing." "I don't doubt that: but I suspect your interpretation of the fact and mine would not agree." "Mine is simple enough. He says that what proved him to be an apostle was his power. He is continually appealing to his power; and what can he mean by that, but that he could do, and had done, what he professed to do? He promised to make those poor heathen rascals of Greeks better, and wiser, and happier men; and, I suppose, he made them so; and then there was no doubt of his commission, or his authority, or anything else. He says himself he did not require any credentials, for they were his credentials, read and known of every one; he had made good men of them out of bad ones, and that was proof enough whose apostle he was." "Well," said Frank half sadly, "I might say a great deal, of course, on the other side of the question, but I prefer hearing what you laymen think about it all." "Will you be angry if I tell you honestly?" "Did you ever find me angry at anything you said?" "No. I will do you the justice to say that. Well, what we laymen say is this. If the parsons have the authority of which they boast, why don't they use it? If they have commission to make bad people good, they must have power too; for He whose commission they claim, is not likely, I should suppose, to set a man to do what he cannot do." "And we can do it, if people would but submit to us. It all comes round again to the same point." "So it does. How to get them to listen. I tried to find out how Paul achieved that first step; and when I looked he told me plainly enough. By becoming all things to all men; by showing these people that he understood them, and knew what was the matter with them. Now do you go and do likewise by Vavasour, and then exercise your authority like a practical man. If you have power to bind and loose, as you told us last Sunday, bind that fellow's ungovernable temper, and loose him from the real slavery which he is in to his miserable conceit and self-indulgence! and then if he does not believe in your 'sacerdotal power,' he is even a greater fool than I take him for." "Honestly, I will try: God help me!" added Frank in a lower voice; "but as for quarrels between man and wife, as I told you, no one understands them less than I." "Then marry a wife yourself and quarrel a little with her for experiment, and then you'll know all about it." Frank laughed in spite of himself. "Thank you. No man is less likely to try that experiment than I." "Hum!"