Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/234

 But to John it was a shock! His face turned a faded yellow. His eyes wandered in a hunted way from the face of the Dean to that of the Evangelist, and then slowly they swept the congregation to meet everywhere looks of approval at the Dean's words.

"But," he protested breathlessly, like a man fighting for air, "I am not a minister. I am a book agent. I have been an actor. I am unfit to stand before the table of the Lord, to hold the hand of the dying, to speak consolation to the living beside the open grave! I am unfit—unfit—for any holy office!"

But his desperate protestation sounded unconvincing even to himself. He had been doing some of these things already and with a measure at least of acceptation. All at once it seemed as if there was no resisting, as if a trap had been laid for him and for his liberties; and he struck out more vehemently:

"Think what it means, you young men! I ask you especially—" and John held out his hands towards them, scattered through the audience—"What it means to abandon life and the world by donning the uniform of the professional clergyman! Wherever you go, in a train, in a restaurant, upon a street, you are no longer free, but a slave—to forms and to conventions. You must live up, not to your ideal of what a minister is, but to the popular ideal of how a minister should appear. It is a vow to hypocrisy!

"It is a vow also to loneliness. The minister is cut off from the life of other men. No man thereafter feels quite at ease in his presence, but puts on something or puts off something, and the minister never sees or feels the real man except by accident.

"For a few weeks," and John lowered his voice to a more tempered note, "I have been happy to do some service among you; but I was free! As I walked down the