Читать книгу The Ball of Fire онлайн

50 страница из 101

“I believe that to be true,” he hastily assured her, glad to be able to agree with her upon something.

“But it is in spite of the church, not because of it,” she immediately added. “You can’t say that there is a tremendous moral influence in a congregation which numbers eight hundred, and sends less than fifty to services. The balance show their devotion to Christianity by a quarterly check.”

The Reverend Smith Boyd felt unfairly hit.

“That is the sorrow of the church,” he sadly confessed; “the lukewarmness of its followers.”

She felt a trace of compunction for him; but why had he gone into the ministry?

“Can you blame them?” she demanded, as much aggrieved as if she had suffered a personal distress. “Not so long ago, the governing body of the church held a convention in which the uppermost thought was this same lukewarmness. It was felt, and acknowledged, that the church was losing its personal hold on its membership, and that something should be done about it; yet that same body progressed no further in this problem than to realise that something should be done about it; and spent hours and hours wrangling over whether banana wine could be used for the sacrament in Uganda, where grapes do not grow, and where every bottle of grape wine carried over the desert represents the life of a man. Of what value is that to religion? How do you suppose Christ would have decided that question?”