Well, once in a while, Smith goes to Church, and it is usually to his hurt. He hears a great deal of reasoning that seems strained to him, in which he is urged to believe many things to be true which in his heart he does not believe to he true. Now Smith tries to be honest. He does not confuse single facts with the whole truth. His ideas of the truth are in no wise pedantic, but he has a sense that the truth involves all the facts in their proper relation on the one hand, and a mind capable of grasping and coordinating them on the other. He does not live up to this ideal, and he knows that he could not reach it if he tried. With large example of his friends and neighbors, he does not try always to get all the facts about a subject into their true relation if this should operate to the disadvantage of his affairs. But he has no sense of a Larger Truth that is not so.

He also hears in church that without Christ all is as nothin­­g—and this has set him to thinking seriously to find out what his attitude really is in the matter. He has re-read his Bible, more especially the Sermon on the Mount, and even there he finds the rule does not work with him. He finds, for instance, that he must resist evil, that he must take thought of the morrow, that he must not give without discrimination. These are not offered as indicating that Smith is right, they merely indicate his point of view. You see the automatic assent that whatever is in the Bible is true, and that whatever Jesus said is of necessity right, has gone out of him. The emotional glow has faded away from dogma. He not only feels free to think alone and independently, but this appeals to him as his duty. He is doing his best, and he feels that he must be honest whether he is right or not.

The unpleasant thought comes to him that the clergy are in the same boat as a lawyer conducting a case at court: that they have taken their retainer and are not free to present other than the one side. All the ethics of their profession inhibit them from the expression of views contrary to the dogma that they represent. Nevertheless he recognizes that their teaching has righteousness in view, and so far as he may be of aid to them in helping along the cause of righteousness, he is willing and glad to do so; but in matters of belief he wishes that they would let him alone. If others feel that they achieve merit by the faith that is in them, he has no objection; he neither argues against it, nor does he oppose them. In his heart he feels that it is better for him to work things out as may than to lie about what he does not believe. This is the substance of his resentment against the Church: that it urges him to affirm that which he does not believe to be true.

The pressure upon him, however is very strong, so he goes to church again, and hears the usual appeal, demanding how anyone can resist the example of the only life that ever was lived without stain or flaw. But he knows that the preacher, no matter how honest he be, can only give record of about three years of that life, and assumes the rest. Surely there is nothing new in this knowledge; he has always known what he knows now, and so has substantially the whole Christian world. The facts remain just what they were. The difference lies in the angle of Smith's vision, in the order in which it seems necessary to him to arrange the facts so as to get a vision of the truth; thus, although he does not enter into any dispute about it, what the preacher says does not go into him.