"If, then," I said, "Christ's teaching is concerned with the spirit, do
you consider that Christians are justified in holding others bound by
formal rules of conduct, without reference to what is passing in their
spirits?"

"If it is for their good."

"What enables you to decide what is for their good?"

"Surely, we are told."

"Not to judge, that ye be not judged."

"Oh! but we do not, ourselves, judge; we are but impersonal ministers of
the rules of God."

"Ah! Do general rules of conduct take account of the variations of the
individual spirit?"

He looked at me hard, as if he began to scent heresy.

"You had better explain yourself more fully," he said. "I really don't
follow."

"Well, let us take a concrete instance. We know Christ's saying of the
married that they are one flesh! But we know also that there are wives
who continue to live the married life with dreadful feelings of spiritual
revolt wives who have found out that, in spite of all their efforts, they
have no spiritual affinity with their husbands. Is that in accordance