Father Gebhard moved restlessly upon his chair and cleared his throat. "Let us get back to business. You will no doubt agree with me, that the best way to settle this question about Lillian will be, to have our church make a moral relation of that, which has been previously immoral."

"No external power, civil or religious, can make that right and holy, which is inherently wrong. Your church does not give its sanction to civil contract alone; it requires the religious rite; the holy sacrament which in this case would be a profanation."

"But," exclaimed the priest with plausibility, "the wrong has been done and the offspring resulting therefrom, constitutes the living bond between the parents which the church would simply ratify, thus protecting the innocent child from its parent's sin."

"And bringing others into the world, born of lustful passion, legalizing prostitution under the cloak of marriage and religion."

"Are you actually permitted to talk such demoralizing stuff among your parishioners?"

"I have certainly never made a secret of my views," returned Adoni calmly, "especially to the young people am I giving the proper instructions in regards to the sex relation, abolishing the false, dual standard of morality to which they have been educated. We must teach society to have a saner, more wholesome concept of this whole sex question, which is everywhere slimed over with false modesty and shame, being thought unclean and something to be denied and disowned. Ah! We need a radical change in the treatment of this subject. Many are beginning to understand that keeping the young people of both sexes in ignorance has created more ills and suffering than it has prevented. I need not remind you that it was lack of proper instruction that was largely responsible for Lillian's sin."

"Sin" sneered Farther Gebhard with a chuckle, "I thought you did not believe in woman's sin."

"Ignorance is sin. Your church is full of it; full of corruption."

"Stop!" With uplifted hand and dignified authority the priest drew himself to his full height and spoke impressively. "Our holy Catholic church is the world's greatest champion of purity and morality, eternally vigilant, warning, counselling, admonishing the faithful against impure thoughts and immodest action. She points with pardonable pride to the glorious purity of the saints of her celibate priest and sisterhood; to the safeguard which her confessional affords; and her invincible stand against the evil of divorce through which scandals and domestic miseries are prevented, and happiness generally secured, and the weaker sex and children protected."

"Yet, in spite of all your admonition and the suppression of scandal and crime, it does not prove that secretly it does not exist. Prison records show proportionally as great a percentage of Catholic as Protestant criminals. I fail to see how your church claims the championship of morality, Why does it erect cloisters wherein to martyrize the body? Is that not a sin in itself?"

"We celebrate our chief triumphs in fleeing the temptations of the body; we despise matter and deliver spirit from its bonds."

"You ignore what God has put on you and all men; a material habitation for spirit to dwell in, a body wonderful in perfection, not to be regarded as a prison house a thing of evil, made to suffer discomfort and chastisement. I am well aware that these temples of the spirit have often become the scene of noisy orgies, of gross materialism and that many of the greatest heroes who sought to eliminate the last vestige from their earthly lives, have died broken-hearted, wasted, defeated, with a confession on their lips that this frightful conflict between body and soul was a delusion."

"But what of those who did triumph over matter; that a few have failed is not a sound argument against the ideal?"

"The ideal is false, for he who separates spirit from matter defames God who created both and pronounced them good."

"Oh! It's easy enough to rant against our system of religion but all your revolutionary ideas will never shatter our faith."

"Blind faith," interjected Adoni with authority, "in which your church, with its creeds and dogmas has held the people in a nightmare of fear and superstition for ages and ages. What do your parishioners know of the progress the world is making with the searchlight of reason penetrating into the great unknown?"

"My dear good friend," defended the priest with dignity. "Learn to be more wise; you must not allowyour people to rise to a plane of knowledge with yourself; let them look to you for what they wish to know, then------"

"If they come and ask their father; does he give them the truth?"

With a searching look of suspicion Adoni waited the priest's answer, who with downcast eyes, reflected a moment, then spoke aggressively:

"You carry your question too far------!"

"One - " interrupted Adoni defiantly - ! "You dare not answer honestly - !"

Baffled, the priest stared at his opponent - .

Adoni regarded him fixedly - , and with profound pity defined his troubled look - !

"What do you call truth - ?" asked Father Gebhard in a sneering tone! Your crazy spiritualism you so freely prate about------?"

Adoni smiled. "Call it what you may - it is a truth, your church fears, most of all!"

"You speak in enigmas, what do you mean?"

"We who had the moral courage to look upon 'naked truth' revealing to us the mysteries of heaven, from where, if we but listen can hear the voice of our departed say: 'We are not dead - but live in a world just as real, and tangible as the one we left behind.' "

"Though unseen, our friends within the veil, hover about us, eager to bring from beyond the grave, a message, which proves to us that -: "there is no death."

"With this knowledge given to the world comes the cry of the ignorant. 'It's the work of the devil!' - and multitudes of benighted souls are left behind struggling in mental darkness - trembling at the thought of death, and fear of an angry God condemning them into their self-created hell.