Philip said nothing for a moment.  His mind was in a whirl of emotion.  Finally he said, “Yes, I would enjoy such a professorship.  It is a very tempting call.  I feel drawn towards it.  And yet——­” he hesitated—­“I don’t know that I ought to leave Milton just now.”

Mrs. Strong was provoked.  “Philip Strong, you have lived this kind of life long enough!  All your efforts in Calvary Church are wasted.  What good have all your sermons done?  It is all a vain sacrifice, and the end will be defeat and misery for you.  Add to all this the fact that this new work will call for the best and most Christian labor, and that some good Christian man will take it if you don’t—­and I don’t see, Philip, how you can possibly think of such a thing as refusing this opportunity.”

“It certainly is a splendid opportunity,” murmured Philip.  “I wonder why they happened to pitch on me for the place!”

“That’s easy enough.  Every one knows that you could fill that chair better than almost any other man in the country.”

“Do you mean by ‘every one’ a little woman by the name of Sarah?” asked Philip, with a brief return of his teasing habit.

“No, sir, I mean all the professors and people in Fairview and all the thinking people of Milton and every one who knows you, Philip.  Every one knows that whatever else you lack, it isn’t brains.”

“I’d like to borrow a few just now, though, for I seem to have lost most of mine.  Lend me yours, won’t you, Sarah, until I settle this question of the call?”

“No, sir, if you can’t settle a plain question like this with all your own brains you couldn’t do any better with the addition of the little I have.”

“Then do you really think, do you, Sarah, that I ought to accept this as the leading of the Spirit of God, and follow without hesitation.”

Mrs. Strong replied with almost tearful earnestness: 

“Philip, it seems to me like the leading of his hand.  Surely you have shown your willingness and your courage and your sacrifice by your work here.  But your methods are distasteful, and your preaching has so far roused only antagonism.  Oh, I dread the thought of this life for you another day.  It looks to me like a suicidal policy, with nothing to show for it when you have gone through with it.”

Philip spread the letter out on the couch and his face grew more and more thoughtful as he gazed into the face of his wife, and his mind went over the ground of his church experience.  If, only, he was, perhaps, thinking, if only the good God had not given him so sensitive and fine-tempered a spirit of conscientiousness.  He almost envied men of coarse, blunt feelings, of common ideals of duty and service.

His wife watched him anxiously.  She knew it was a crisis with him.  At last he said:—­

“Well, Sarah, I don’t know but you’re right.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.  The professorship would be free from the incessant worry and anxiety of a parish, and then I might be just as useful in the Seminary as I am here—­who knows?”