A man will be judged, however, by his truth toward what he professes to believe, and John was far truer to his perception of the duty of man to man than are ninety-nine out of the hundreds of so-called Christians to the things they profess to believe. How many men would be immeasurably better, if they would but truly believe, that is, act upon, the smallest part of what they untruly profess to believe, even if they cast aside all the rest. John cast aside an allegiance to God which had never been more than a mockery, and set about delivering his race from the fear of a person who did not exist.

For, true enough, there was no God of the kind John denied. Yet what if, in delivering his kind from the tyranny of a false God, he aided in hiding from them the love of a true God—of a God that did and ought to exist?

There are other passions besides fear, and precious as fear is hateful. If there be a God and one has never sought him, it will be small consolation to remember that he could not get proof of his existence. Is a child not to seek his father, because he cannot prove he is alive?

His mother continued to take the boy to church, and expose him to a teaching she could not herself either supply or supplement. It was the business of the church to teach Christianity, her part was to accept it and bring the child where he also might listen and accept. But what she accepted as Christianity is another question. And whether the acceptance of anything makes a Christian is another still.

How much of Christianity a child may or may not learn by going to church, it is impossible to say, but certainly Richard did not learn anything that drew his heart to Jesus of Nazareth, or caught him in any heavenly breeze, or even the smallest of celestial whirlwinds. He learned nothing even that made unwelcome such remarks as his father would now and then let fall concerning the clergy and the way they followed their trade. He was not very advanced in years, in fact, before his growing mind began to be aware that the religion presented in his mother’s church was a religion neither honourable nor elevating and was but the dullest travesty of the religion of St. Paul. Richard had, besides, read several books which, had his father been truly careful of the promise he had given his wife, he would have intentionally removed instead of unintentionally leaving about.

And in the position Richard had just taken toward his new friends, he was not a little influenced by his desire to show himself free from prevailing notions and capable of thinking for himself. Many young fellows are as ready to deny as Richard, but not many feel as strongly that life rests upon what we know, that knowledge must pass into action. The denial of every falsehood under the sun would not generate one throb of life.