Burned Bridges

A clean cut in the flesh of a healthy man heals quickly. In two weeks

Thompson could put his full weight on the injured member without pain or

any tendency to reopening the wound. Whereupon he repaired to his cabin

again, in a state of mind that was very disturbing. Without accepting

any of the Carr dictums upon theology and theological activities, he was

fast growing doubtful of his fitness for the job of herding other people

into the fold. He found himself with a growing disinclination for such a

task as his life work. Since that was the only thing he had any aptitude

for or training in, when he thought of cutting loose and facing the

world at large without the least idea of what he should do or how he

should do it, he perceived himself in a good deal of a dilemma.

He was growing sure of one thing. Over and above the good of his soul

and other people's souls, a man must eat--to put it baldly. He should

earn his keep. He must indeed calculate upon provision for two. Mr.

Thompson had made the common mistake of believing himself

self-sufficient, and Sophie Carr had unwittingly taught him that a male

celibate was an anomaly in nature's reckoning. He had thought himself

immune from the ordinary passions of humanity. The strangest part of it

was a saddened gladness that he was not. Somehow, he did not want to be

a spiritual superman. He would rather love and struggle and suffer than

stand aloof, thanking God that he was not, like the Pharisees, as other

men. Sitting moodily by his rusty stove he confessed to himself that a

man who would gladly give up his hopes of eternal salvation for the

privilege of folding Sophie Carr close in his arms had no business in

the ministry--unless he simply wanted to hold down an easy, salaried

job.

Whatever other sorts of a fool he might have been Thompson was no

hypocrite. He had never consciously looked upon the ministry as a man

looks upon a business career--a succession of steps to success, to an

assured social and financial position. Yet when he turned the

searchlight of analysis upon his motives he could not help seeing that

this was the very thing he had unwittingly been doing--that he had

expected and hoped for his progress through missionary work and small

churches eventually to bestow upon him a call to a wider field--a call

which Sam Carr had callously suggested meant neither more nor less than

a bigger church, a wider social circle, a bigger salary. And Thompson

could see that he had been looking forward to these things as a just

reward, and he could see too how the material benefits in them were the

lure. He had been coached and primed for that. His inclination had been

sedulously directed into that channel. His enthusiasm had been the

enthusiasm of one who seeks to serve and feels wholly competent.