I said—

“I know a very good Christian who cannot fill this bill—nor any detail of it, in fact.”

“I must take that as a jest,” he said, lightly.

“No, not a jest.”

“Then as at least an extravagance, an exaggeration?”

“No, as fact, simple fact. And I am not speaking of a commonplace Christian, but of a high-class one; one whose Christian record is without spot; one who can take rank, un-challenged, with the very best. I have not known a better; and I love him and admire him.”

“Come—you love and admire him, and yet he cannot fill any single detail of that beautiful character which I have portrayed?”

“Not a single one. Let me describe one of his performances. He conceived the idea of getting some pleasure out of deceiving, beguiling, swindling, pursuing, frightening, capturing, torturing, mutilating and murdering a child—”

“Im-possible!”

“A child that had never done him any harm; a child that was gratefully enjoying its innocent life and liberty, and not suspecting that any one would want to take them away from it—for any reason, least of all for the mere pleasure of it. And so—”

“You are describing a Christian? There is no such Christian. You are describing a madman.”

“No, a Christian—as good a one as lives. He sought out the child where it was playing, and offered it some dainties—offered them cunningly, persuasively, treacherously, cowardly, and the child, mistaking him for one who meant it a kindness, thankfully swallowed the dainties—then fled away in pain and terror, for the gift was poisoned. The man was full of joy at the success of his ingenious fraud, and chased the frightened child from one refuge to another for an hour, in a delirium of delight, and finally caught it and killed it; and by his eloquent enthusiasms one could see that he was as proud of his exploit as ever brave knight was, of deceiving, beguiling, betraying and destroying a cruel and wicked and pestilent giant thirty feet high. There—do you see? Is there any resemblance between this Christian and yours? This one was not brave, but the reverse of it; he was not fair and honorable, he was a deceiver, a beguiler, a swindler, he took advantage of ignorant trustfulness and betrayed it; he had no pity for distress and fright and pain, but took a frenzied delight in causing them, and watching the effects. He was no protector of threatened liberty and menaced life, but took them both. And did it for fun. Merely for fun. But you seem to doubt me. Here is his own account of it; read it yourself; I clipped it out of the Atlantic last night. For ‘fish’ in the text, read ‘child.’ There is no other difference. It is a Christian in both cases, and in both cases the human race is exposed for what it is—a self-admiring humbug.”

As a point of departure, listen to a quotation from Dr. Henry van Dyke:—

“Chrr! sings the reel. The line tightens. The little rod firmly gripped in my hands bends into a bow of beauty, and a hundred feet behind us a splendid silver salmon leaps into the air. ‘What is it?’ cries the gypsy, ‘a fish?’ It is a fish, indeed, a noble ouananiche, and well hooked. Now if the gulls were here who grab little fish suddenly and never give them a chance; and if the mealy-mouthed sentimentalists were here, who like their fish slowly strangled to death in nets, they should see a fairer method of angling.

“The weight of the fish is twenty times that of the rod against which he matches himself. The tiny hook is caught painlessly in the gristle of his jaws. The line is long and light. He has the whole lake to play in, and he uses almost all of it, running, leaping, sounding the deep water, turning suddenly to get a slack line. The gypsy, tremendously excited, manages the boat with perfect skill, rowing this way and that way, advancing or backing water to meet the tactics of the fish, and doing the most important part of the work.

“After half an hour the ouananiche begins to grow tired and can be reeled in near to the boat. We can see him distinctly as he gleams in the dark water. It is time to think of landing him. Then we remember with a flash of despair that we have no landing-net! To lift him from the water by this line would break it in an instant. There is not a foot of the rocky shore smooth enough to beach him on.