Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/236

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gained your confidence. Because of his humility and his sincerity, I feel that I can trust him. You feel that you can."

"But," protested John, with a gesture of desperation, "I am not educated for the ministry."

"You have something more needed here than education," interjected the Dean of the Seminary, still in his lecture-room voice. "Besides, the seminary is but ten miles away, by street car. You may complete the full three years' course at the same time you are making this little church into a big one!"

Something in John's breast leaped at the prospect of a college course, and the idea of making a little church into a big one appealed to his inborn passion for definite achievement; yet with it all came once more the feeling that he was being hopelessly and helplessly entangled.

"But," he struggled, looking with moist, appealing eyes, first at Hamilton and then at Harding, "I have not been ordained, and I have no call!"

"No call?" queried Dean Hamilton, laughing nervously, as was his way of modifying the intensity of the situation. "Your capacity to do is your call."

"Being honest with yourself, do you not believe that you can save this church?" argued Brother Harding.

John felt that he could, but his soul still strained within him, and his eyes roved over the audience, the corners of the room and the very beams in the ceiling, as if seeking a way of escape.

Suddenly a man stood up in the back of the church.

"Will he take a side?" this man demanded excitedly, with hoarse impatience. "What side is he on?"

The very crassness of this partisan creature, so seething with personal feeling that he understood nothing of the young man's agony of soul, lashed the tender sensibilities of Hampstead like a scourge, so that all his nature rose in