But he could not stay there. The place was haunted, he could not stay!
He turned his face toward the open country, but the fields and woodlands
had no call for him that day. It was his little study that called; his
books, his work.
As one goes to sit beside the body of a dear friend, conscious that the
friend he loved is not there, yet unable to leave the form wherein the
spirit had lived, so Dan went back to his room, his desk, his books, his
papers--that which had been his work.
And now the deep passions of the man stirred themselves--awoke. Wild
anger, mad rage, seized and shook him. His whole sense of justice was
outraged. This was not Christianity, this thing that had caught him in
its foul snare! And if the church was not Christian what was
Christianity? Was there, indeed, such a thing? Was it all such a hollow
mockery?
So the Doctor found him in the late afternoon--his great strength shaken
by rage and doubt; found him struggling like a beast in the trap.
And the Doctor saw that the hour for which he had waited had come.
Dan needed him--needed him badly!
CHAPTER XL.
THE DOCTOR'S GLASSES
"'There is no hatred, lad, so bitter as that hatred born of a religious
love; no falsehood so vile as the lie spoken in defense of truth; no
wrong so harmful as the wrong committed in the name of righteousness; no
injustice so terrible as the injustice of those who condemn in the name
of the Saviour of the world!'"
When Dan, forced into something of his habitual self-control and calmness
by the presence of his old friend, began telling the Doctor of the action
of the church the other checked him abruptly with, "I know all about
that, lad.
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