insanity is of the incurable kind. That comes of denying her God."
"Don't talk rot, man," said Paul, who still harboured a grudge against the sect that had tried to Shanghai him into the fold, "It's insane to fire off twelve-inch guns. All phases of warfare are insane. We're no more exempt than the enemy."
The minister was stung by the trace of contempt in Paul's tone. "Do you realize?" he asked, "that your remarks might be interpreted as seditious?"
"Fully. The truth is always seditious—as Socrates and Christ knew to their cost. You men of God don't preach Christ these days. You preach Jehovah, and choose the bloodiest texts in the Old Testament. Why not be consistent—be patriarchal, practise polygamy, and the whole bag of tricks!"
The minister bowed and walked away. Paul had no remorse, for he was settling an old score. He was not impious. Faith had been bred in him through occasional flashes of insight. He passionately envied adepts who had penetrated into the inner temples. But his religion was an intensely personal relationship with the infinite—an infinite which men, in the feebleness of their imagination, had had to personify as an old gentleman with a beard. He heartily endorsed the proverb which says: "Il vaut mieux avoir affaire à Dieu qu' à ses saints." Of course he had made an enemy of the minister, but he preferred enemies to friends who edited his conduct to bring it into conformity with their mechanical orthodoxy.
Even Phœbe, his new friend, persisted in hushing up his heterodoxies, though he had striven to train her into understanding, if not sharing, his own contempt of criticism. His views had shocked her, as they shocked all the others. But Phœbe possessed a mind that invited ideas. Unlike the girls with whom she had studied at Normal School, she had not considered her education
