"I understand as much! It is very wrong! _Why_ don't you?"

Andrew was silent.

"I wish you to tell me," persisted Alexa, with a peremptoriness which
came of the school-master. She had known him too as a pupil of her
father's!

"If you will have it, ma'am, I not only learn nothing from Mr. Smith,
but I think much that he says is not true."

"Still you ought to go for the sake of example."

"Do wrong to make other people follow my example? Can that be to do
right?"

"_Wrong_ to go to church! What _do_ you mean? Wrong to pray with your
fellow-men?"

"Perhaps the hour may come, ma'am, when I shall be able to pray with my
fellow-men, even though the words they use seem addressed to a tyrant,
not to the Father of Jesus Christ. But at present I can not. I might
endure to hear Mr. Smith say evil things concerning God, but the evil
things he says to God make me quite unable to pray, and I feel like a
hypocrite!"

"Whatever you may think of Mr. Smith's doctrines, it is presumptuous to
set yourself up as too good to go to church."