“Sure, I’ll go,” he growled, reluctantly.

“You old crab, you,” chirped Bill, cheerfully, when Courtland had gone out.  “Can’t you see you’ve got to humor him?  He needs homeopathic treatment.  ‘Like cures like.’  Give him a good dose of religion and he’ll get good and tired of it.  Church won’t hurt him any, just give him a good, pious feeling so he’ll feel free to do as he pleases during the week.  I had a ’phone from Gila this morning.  She says he’s made another date with her after exams.  He fell, all right, so go get your little lid and toddle off to Sunday-school.  Try to toll him into a big, stylish church.  They’re safest; but ’most any of ’em are cold enough to freeze the eye-teeth out of a stranger as far as my experience goes.”

“Well, this isn’t my funeral,” sulked Tennelly, going to his closet for suitable raiment.  “I s’pose you get your way, but Court’s keen intellectually, and if he happens to strike a good preacher he’s liable to fall for what he says, in the mood he’s in now.”

“Well, he won’t strike a good preacher.  There isn’t one nowadays.  There are orators in the pulpit, plenty of them, but they’re all preaching about politics these days, or raving about uplifting the masses, and that sorta thing won’t hurt Court.  Most of ’em are dry as punk.  If Court keeps awake through the service he won’t go again, mark my words.”

They chose a church at random, these two who had decided to go up to the house of God.  High-arched and Gothic were its massive walls, with intricate carving like lace in the stonework.  Softly swung leather doors shut the sanctuary from the outer world.  The fretted gold-and-blue-and-scarlet ceiling stretched away miles, as it were, in the space above them, and rich carvings in dark, costly wood met the wonderful frescoes at lofty heights.  The carpets were soft, and the pews were upholstered in tones to match.  A great silence brooded over the place, making itself felt above and beneath the swelling tones of the wonderful organ.  People trod the aisles softly, like puppets playing each his part.  They bent in form of prayer for a moment and settled into silence.  The minister came stiffly into the pulpit, casting a furtive eye about his congregation.

They noticed almost at once that the most unpopular professor in the university was acting as usher on the other side of the church.  Tennelly frowned and looked at Courtland, who sat watching the aforesaid usher as he showed people to their seats, wondering if that man had a thing he called religion, and if he was in any way related to Stephen Marshall’s Christ.  This was a voyage of discovery for Courtland, this visit to a Christian church.  He had scarcely been to religious services since he entered the university.  He had considered them a waste of time.  Now he had come to see if there was really anything in them.  It did not occur to him that they had a real connection with those verses he had read in the Bible about “doing the will,” or that the going or staying away from them was in any wise obligatory upon one who had allied himself with Christ.  The church stood to him as to many other young pagans such as he was, for a man-made institution, to be attended or not as one chose.