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 or stay away from church altogether—thus, Bess darling, depriving my wife and babes of a few more pennies! But seriously, Phil—"

"A man always says 'But seriously' when he feels the previous arguments haven't been so good yet!"

"Maybe. But anyway, what I mean to say is: Of course my liberalism is all foolishness! Do you know why my people stand for it? They're not enough interested to realize what I'm saying! If I had a successor who was a fundamentalist, they'd like him just as well or better, and they'd go back a-whooping to the sacred hell-fire that I've coaxed 'em out of. They don't believe I mean it when I take a shot at the fear of eternal punishment, and the whole magic and taboo system of worshiping the Bible and the ministry, and all the other skull-decorated vestiges of horror there are in so-called Christianity! They don't know it! Partly it's because they've been trained not to believe anything much they hear in sermons. But also it's my fault. I'm not aggressive. I ought to jump around like a lunatic or a popular evangelist, and shout, 'D' you understand? When I say that most of your religious opinions are bunk, why, what I mean is, they're ''bunk! ' '' I've never been violently enough in earnest to be beaten for the sake of the Lord our God! . . . Not yet!"

"Hah, there I've got you, Frank! Tickles me to see you try to be the village atheist! 'For the sake of the Lord' you just said. And how often I've heard you say at parting 'God bless you'—and you meant it! Oh, no, you don't believe in Christ! Not any more than the Pope at Rome!"

"I suppose that if I said 'God damn you,' that would also prove that I was a devout Christian! Oh, Phil, I can't understand how a man as honest as you, as really fond of helping people—and of tolerating them!—can stand being classed with a lot of your fellow preachers and not even kick about it! Think of your going on enduring being a fellow Methodist preacher right in the same town with Elmer Gantry and not standing up in ministers' meeting and saying, 'Either he gets out or I do!

"I know! You idiot, don't you suppose those of us that are halfway decent suffer from being classed with Gantry, and that we hate him more than you do? But even if Elmer is rather on the swine side, what of it? Would you condemn a