"It is."

"Did Christ and the Apostles themselves teach that everything
contained in what we call the old Bible must be believed?"

"They did!"

The pastor was grasping the arms of his chair, his body bent toward
the lad, his head thrown back, his face livid with sacred rage. He
was a good man, tried and true: God-fearing, God-serving. No fault
lay in him unless it may be imputed for unrighteousness that he was
a stanch, trenchant sectary in his place and generation. As he sat
there in the basement study of his church, his pulpit of authority
and his baptismal pool of regeneration directly over his head, all
round him in the city the solid hundreds of his followers, he
forgot himself as a man and a minister and remembered only that as
a servant of the Most High he was being interrogated and
dishonored. His soul shook and thundered within him to repel these
attacks upon his Lord and Master. As those unexpected random
questions had poured in upon him thick and fast, all emerging, as
it seemed to him, like disembodied evil spirits from the black pit
of Satan and the damned, it was joy to him to deal to each that
same straight,

God-directed spear-thrust of a reply--killing them as they rose.
His soul exulted in that blessed carnage.

But the questions ceased. They had hurried out as though there were
a myriad pressing behind--a few issuing bees of an aroused swarm.
But they ceased. The pastor leaned back in his chair and drew a