‘It would be grand indeed! But supposing it true, how could we be expected to believe it like them that saw him with their own eyes? _I_ couldn’t be required to believe just as if I could have no doubt about it. It wouldn’t be fair. Only--perhaps we haven’t got the clew by the right end.’ ‘Perhaps not. But sometimes I hate the whole thing. And then again I feel as if I _must_ read all about it; not that I care for it exactly, but because a body must do something--because--I don’t know how to say it--because of the misery, you know.’ ‘I don’t know that I do know--quite. But now you have started the subject, I thought that was great nonsense Mr Forest was talking about the authority of the Church the other day.’ ‘Well, _I_ thought so, too. I don’t see what right they have to say so and so, if they didn’t hear him speak. As to what he meant, they may be right or they may be wrong. If they _have_ the gift of the Spirit, as they say--how am I to tell they have? All impostors claim it as well as the true men. If I had ever so little of the same gift myself, I suppose I could tell; but they say no one has till he believes--so they may be all humbugs for anything I can possibly tell; or they may be all true men, and yet I may fancy them all humbugs, and can’t help it.’ I was quite as much astonished to hear Charley talk in this style as some readers will be doubtful whether a boy could have talked such good sense. I said nothing, and a silence followed. ‘Would you like me to read to you, then?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I should; for, do you know, after all, I don’t think there’s anything like the New Testament.’ ‘Anything like it!’ he repeated. ‘I should think not! Only I wish I did know what it all meant. I wish I could talk to my father as I would to Jesus Christ if I saw _him_. But if I could talk to my father, he wouldn’t understand me. He would speak to me as if I were the very scum of the universe for daring to have a doubt of what _he_ told me.’ ‘But he doesn’t mean _himself_,’ I said. ‘Well, who told him?’ ‘The Bible.’ ‘And who told the Bible?’ ‘God, of course.’ ‘But how am I to know that? I only know that they say so. Do you know, Wilfrid--I _don’t_ believe my father is quite sure himself, and that is what makes him in such a rage with anybody who doesn’t think as he does. He’s afraid it mayn’t be true after all.’ I had never had a father to talk to, but I thought something must be wrong when a boy _couldn’t_ talk to his father. My uncle was a better father than that came to.