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+Project Gutenberg's The Inside of the Cup, Volume 6, by Winston Churchill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Inside of the Cup, Volume 6
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: October 17, 2004 [EBook #5361]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INSIDE OF THE CUP, VOLUME 6 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE INSIDE OF THE CUP
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+
+Volume 6.
+
+
+XX.    THE ARRAIGNMENT
+XXI.   ALISON GOES TO CHURCH
+XXII.  WHICH SAY TO THE SEERS, SEE NOT!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE ARRAIGNMENT
+
+
+I
+
+Looking backward, Hodder perceived that he had really come to the
+momentous decision of remaining at St. John's in the twilight of an
+evening when, on returning home from seeing Kate Marcy at Mr. Bentley's
+he had entered the darkening church. It was then that his mission had
+appeared to him as a vision. Every day, afterward, his sense and
+knowledge of this mission had grown stronger.
+
+To his mind, not the least of the trials it was to impose upon him, and
+one which would have to be dealt with shortly, was a necessary talk with
+his assistant, McCrae. If their relationship had from the beginning been
+unusual and unsatisfactory, adjectives would seem to defy what it had
+become during the summer. What did McCrae think of him? For Hodder had,
+it will be recalled, bidden his assistant good-by--and then had remained.
+At another brief interview, during which McCrae had betrayed no surprise,
+uttered no censure or comment, Hodder had announced his determination to
+remain in the city, and to take no part in the services. An announcement
+sufficiently astounding. During the months that followed, they had met,
+at rare intervals, exchanged casual greetings, and passed on. And yet
+Hodder had the feeling, more firmly planted than ever, that McCrae was
+awaiting, with an interest which might be called suspense, the
+culmination of the process going on within him.
+
+Well, now that he had worked it out, now that he had reached his
+decision, it was incumbent upon him to tell his assistant what that
+decision was. Hodder shrank from it as from an ordeal. His affection
+for the man, his admiration for McCrae's faithful, untiring, and
+unrecognized services had deepened. He had a theory that McCrae
+really liked him--would even sympathize with his solution; yet he
+procrastinated. He was afraid to put his theory to the test. It was not
+that Hodder feared that his own solution was not the right one, but that
+McCrae might not find it so: he was intensely concerned that it should
+also be McCrae's solution--the answer, if one liked, to McCrae's mute and
+eternal questionings. He wished to have it a fruition for McCrae as well
+as for himself; since theoretically, at least, he had pierced the hard
+crust of his assistant's exterior, and conceived him beneath to be all
+suppressed fire. In short, Hodder wished to go into battle side by side
+with McCrae. Therein lay his anxiety.
+
+Another consideration troubled him--McCrae's family, dependent on a
+rather meagre salary. His assistant, in sustaining him in the struggle
+he meant to enter, would be making even a greater sacrifice than himself.
+For Hodder had no illusions, and knew that the odds against him were
+incalculable. Whatever, if defeated, his own future might be, McCrae's
+was still more problematical and tragic.
+
+The situation, when it came, was even more difficult than Hodder
+had imagined it, since McCrae was not a man to oil the wheels of
+conversation. In silence he followed the rector up the stairs and into
+his study, in silence he took the seat at the opposite side of the table.
+And Hodder, as he hesitated over his opening, contemplated in no little
+perplexity and travail the gaunt and non-committal face before him:
+
+"McCrae," he began at length, "you must have thought my conduct this
+summer most peculiar. I wish to thank you, first of all, for the
+consideration you have shown me, and to tell you how deeply I appreciate
+your taking the entire burden of the work of the parish."
+
+McCrae shook his head vigorously, but did not speak.
+
+"I owe it to you to give you some clew to what happened to me," the
+rector continued, "although I have an idea that you do not need much
+enlightenment on this matter. I have a feeling that you have somehow
+been aware of my discouragement during the past year or so, and of the
+causes of it. You yourself hold ideals concerning the Church which you
+have not confided to me. Of this I am sure. I came here to St. John's
+full of hope and confidence, gradually to lose both, gradually to realise
+that there was something wrong with me, that in spite of all my efforts
+I was unable to make any headway in the right direction. I became
+perplexed, dissatisfied--the results were so meagre, so out of proportion
+to the labour. And the very fact that those who may be called our chief
+parishioners had no complaint merely added to my uneasiness. That kind
+of success didn't satisfy me, and I venture to assume it didn't satisfy
+you."
+
+Still McCrae made no sign.
+
+"Finally I came to what may be termed a double conclusion. In the first
+place, I began to see more and more clearly that our modern civilization
+is at fault, to perceive how completely it is conducted on the
+materialistic theory of the survival of the fittest rather than that of
+the brotherhood of man, and that those who mainly support this church
+are, consciously or not, using it as a bulwark for the privilege they
+have gained at the expense of their fellow-citizens. And my conclusion
+was that Christianity must contain some vital germ which I had somehow
+missed, and which I must find if I could, and preach and release it.
+That it was the release of this germ these people feared unconsciously.
+I say to you, at the risk of the accusation of conceit, that I believed
+myself to have a power in the pulpit if I could only discover the truth."
+
+Hodder thought he detected, as he spoke these words, a certain relaxation
+of the tension.
+
+"For a while, as the result of discouragement, of cowardice, I may say,
+of the tearing-down process of the theological structure--built of debris
+from many ruins on which my conception of Christianity rested, I lost all
+faith. For many weeks I did not enter the church, as you yourself must
+know. Then, when I had given up all hope, through certain incidents and
+certain persona, a process of reconstruction began. In short, through no
+virtue which I can claim as my own, I believe I have arrived at the
+threshold of an understanding of Christianity as our Lord taught it and
+lived it. And I intend to take the pulpit and begin to preach it.
+
+"I am deeply concerned in regard to yourself as to what effect my course
+may have on you. And I am not you to listen to me with a view that you
+should see your way clear to support me McCrae, but rather that you
+should be fully apprised of my new belief and intentions. I owe this to
+you, for your loyal support in the pest. I shall go over with you,
+later, if you care to listen, my whole position. It may be called the
+extreme Protestant position, and I use protestant, for want of a better
+word, to express what I believe is Paul's true as distinguished from the
+false of his two inconsistent theologies. It was this doctrine of Paul's
+of redemption by faith, of reacting grace by an inevitable spiritual law
+--of rebirth, if you will--that Luther and the Protestant reformers
+revived and recognized, rightly, as the vital element of Christ's
+teachings, although they did not succeed in separating it wholly from the
+dross which clung to it. It is the leaven which has changed governments,
+and which in the end, I am firmly convinced, will make true democracy
+inevitable. And those who oppose democracy inherently dread its
+workings.
+
+"I do not know your views, but it is only fair to add at this time that I
+no longer believe in the external and imposed authority of the Church in
+the sense in which I formerly accepted it, nor in the virgin birth, nor
+in certain other dogmas in which I once acquiesced. Other clergymen of
+our communion have proclaimed, in speech and writing, their disbelief in
+these things. I have satisfied my conscience as they have, and I mean to
+make no secret of my change. I am convinced that not one man or woman
+in ten thousand to-day who has rejected Christianity ever knew what
+Christianity is. The science and archaic philosophy in which
+Christianity has been swaddled and hampered is discredited, and the
+conclusion is drawn that Christianity itself must be discredited."
+
+"Ye're going to preach all this?" McCrae demanded, almost fiercely.
+
+"Yes," Hodder replied, still uncertain as to his assistant's attitude,
+"and more. I have fully reflected, and I am willing to accept all the
+consequences. I understand perfectly, McCrae, that the promulgation
+alone of the liberal orthodoxy of which I have spoken will bring me into
+conflict with the majority of the vestry and the congregation, and that
+the bishop will be appealed to. They will say, in effect, that I have
+cheated them, that they hired one man and that another has turned up,
+whom they never would have hired. But that won't be the whole story.
+If it were merely a question of doctrine, I should resign. It's deeper
+than that, more sinister." Hodder doubled up his hand, and laid it on
+the table. "It's a matter," he said, looking into McCrae's eyes, "of
+freeing this church from those who now hold it in chains. And the two
+questions, I see clearly now, the doctrinal and the economic, are so
+interwoven as to be inseparable. My former, ancient presentation of
+Christianity left men and women cold. It did not draw them into this
+church and send them out again fired with the determination to bring
+religion into everyday life, resolved to do their part in the removal of
+the injustices and cruelties with which we are surrounded, to bring
+Christianity into government, where it belongs. Don't misunderstand me
+I'm not going to preach politics, but religion."
+
+"I don't misunderstand ye," answered McCrae. He leaned a little forward,
+staring at the rector from behind his steel spectacles with a glance
+which had become piercing.
+
+"And I am going to discourage a charity which is a mockery of
+Christianity," Hodder went on, "the spectacle of which turns thousands
+of men and women in sickening revolt against the Church of Christ to-day.
+I have discovered, at last, how some of these persons have made their
+money, and are making it. And I am going to let them know, since they
+have repudiated God in their own souls, since they have denied the
+Christian principle of individual responsibility, that I, as the vicar of
+God, will not be a party to the transaction of using the Church as a
+means of doling out ill-gotten gains to the poor."
+
+"Mr. Parr!" McCrae exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," said the rector, slowly, and with a touch of sadness, "since you
+have mentioned him, Mr. Parr. But I need not say that this must go no
+farther. I am in possession of definite facts in regard to Mr. Parr
+which I shall present to him when he returns."
+
+"Ye'll tell him to his face?"
+
+"It is the only way."
+
+McCrae had risen. A remarkable transformation had come over the man,
+--he was reminiscent, at that moment, of some Covenanter ancestor going
+into battle. And his voice shook with excitement.
+
+"Ye may count on me, Mr. Hodder," he cried. "These many years I've
+waited, these many years I've seen what ye see now, but I was not the
+man. Aye, I've watched ye, since the day ye first set foot in this
+church. I knew what was going on inside of ye, because it was just
+that I felt myself. I hoped--I prayed ye might come to it."
+
+The sight of this taciturn Scotchman, moved in this way, had an
+extraordinary effect on Hodder himself, and his own emotion was so
+inexpressibly stirred that he kept silence a moment to control it.
+This proof of the truth of his theory in regard to McCrae he found
+overwhelming.
+
+"But you said nothing, McCrae," he began presently. "I felt all along
+that you knew what was wrong--if you had only spoken."
+
+"I could not," said McCrae. "I give ye my word I tried, but I just could
+not. Many's the time I wanted to--but I said to myself, when I looked at
+you, 'wait, it will come, much better than ye can say it.' And ye have
+made me see more than I saw, Mr. Hodder,--already ye have. Ye've got the
+whole thing in ye're eye, and I only had a part of it. It's because
+ye're the bigger man of the two."
+
+"You thought I'd come to it?" demanded Hodder, as though the full force
+of this insight had just struck him.
+
+"Well," said McCrae, "I hoped. It seemed, to look at ye, ye'r true
+nature--what was by rights inside of ye. That's the best explaining I
+can do. And I call to mind that time ye spoke about not making the men
+in the classes Christians--that was what started me to thinking."
+
+"And you asked me," returned the rector, "how welcome some of them would
+be in Mr. Parr's Pew."
+
+"Ah, it worried me," declared the assistant, with characteristic
+frankness, "to see how deep ye were getting in with him."
+
+Hodder did not reply to this. He had himself risen, and stood looking at
+McCrae, filled with a new thought.
+
+"There is one thing I should like to say to you--which is very difficult,
+McCrae, but I have no doubt you see the matter as clearly as I do. In
+making this fight, I have no one but myself to consider. I am a single
+man--"
+
+"Yell not need to go on," answered McCrae, with an odd mixture of
+sternness and gentleness in his voice. "I'll stand and fall with ye, Mr.
+Hodder. Before I ever thought of the Church I learned a trade, as a boy
+in Scotland. I'm not a bad carpenter. And if worse comes to worse, I've
+an idea I can make as much with my hands as I make in the ministry."
+
+The smile they exchanged across the table sealed the compact between
+them.
+
+
+
+II
+
+The electric car which carried him to his appointment with the financier
+shot westward like a meteor through the night. And now that the hour was
+actually at hand, it seemed to Hodder that he was absurdly unprepared to
+meet it. New and formidable aspects, hitherto unthought of, rose in his
+mind, and the figure of Eldon Parr loomed to Brobdingnagian proportions
+as he approached it. In spite of his determination, the life-blood of
+his confidence ebbed, a sense of the power and might of the man who had
+now become his adversary increased; and that apprehension of the impact
+of the great banker's personality, the cutting edge with the vast
+achievements wedged in behind it, each adding weight and impetus to its
+momentum the apprehension he had felt in less degree on the day of the
+first meeting, and which had almost immediately evaporated--surged up
+in him now. His fear was lest the charged atmosphere of the banker's
+presence might deflect his own hitherto clear perception of true worth.
+He dreaded, once in the midst of those disturbing currents, a bungling
+presentation of the cause which inspired him, and which he knew to be
+righteousness itself.
+
+Suddenly his mood shifted, betraying still another weakness, and he saw
+Eldon Parr, suddenly, vividly--more vividly, indeed, than ever before--in
+the shades of the hell of his loneliness. And pity welled up, drowning
+the image of incarnate greed and selfishness and lust for wealth and
+power: The unique pathos of his former relationship with the man
+reasserted itself, and Hodder was conscious once more of the dependence
+which Eldon Parr had had on his friendship. During that friendship he,
+Hodder, had never lost the sense of being the stronger of the two, of
+being leaned upon: leaned upon by a man whom the world feared and hated,
+and whom he had been enable to regard with anything but compassion and
+the unquestionable affection which sprang from it. Appalled by this
+transition, he alighted from the car, and stood for a moment alone in the
+darkness gazing at the great white houses that rose above the dusky
+outline of shrubbery and trees.
+
+At any rate, he wouldn't find that sense of dependence to-night. And it
+steeled him somewhat to think, as he resumed his steps, that he would
+meet now the other side, the hard side hitherto always turned away. Had
+he needed no other warning of this, the answer to his note asking for an
+appointment would have been enough,--a brief and formal communication
+signed by the banker's secretary. . .
+
+"Mr. Parr is engaged just at present, sir," said the servant who opened
+the door. "Would you be good enough to step into the library?"
+
+Hardly had he entered the room when he heard a sound behind him, and
+turned to confront Alison. The thought of her, too, had complicated
+infinitely his emotions concerning the interview before him, and the
+sight of her now, of her mature beauty displayed in evening dress, of her
+white throat gleaming whiter against the severe black of her gown, made
+him literally speechless. Never had he accused her of boldness, and now
+least of all. It was the quality of her splendid courage that was borne
+in upon him once more above the host of other feelings and impressions,
+for he read in her eyes a knowledge of the meaning of his visit.
+
+They stood facing each other an appreciable moment.
+
+"Mr. Langmaid is with him now," she said, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+Her eyes still rested on his face, questioningly, appraisingly, as though
+she were seeking to estimate his preparedness for the ordeal before him,
+his ability to go through with it successfully, triumphantly. And in her
+mention of Langmaid he recognized that she had meant to sound a note of
+warning. She had intimated a consultation of the captains, a council of
+war. And yet he had never spoken to her of this visit. This proof of
+her partisanship, that she had come to him at the crucial instant,
+overwhelmed him.
+
+"You know why I am here?" he managed to say. It had to do with the
+extent of her knowledge.
+
+"Oh, why shouldn't I?" she cried, "after what you have told me. And
+could you think I didn't understand, from the beginning, that it meant
+this?"
+
+His agitation still hampered him. He made a gesture of assent.
+
+"It was inevitable," he said.
+
+"Yes, it' was inevitable," she assented, and walked slowly to the mantel,
+resting her hand on it and bending her head. "I felt that you would not
+shirk it, and yet I realize how painful it must be to you."
+
+"And to you," he replied quickly.
+
+"Yes, and to me. I do not know what you know, specifically,--I have
+never sought to find out things, in detail. That would be horrid. But
+I understand--in general--I have understood for many years." She raised
+her head, and flashed him a glance that was between a quivering smile and
+tears. "And I know that you have certain specific information."
+
+He could only wonder at her intuition.
+
+"So far as I am concerned, it is not for the world," he answered.
+
+"Oh, I appreciate that in you!" she exclaimed. "I wished you to know it.
+I wished you to know," she added, a little unsteadily, "how much I admire
+you for what you are doing. They are afraid of you--they will crush you
+if they can."
+
+He did not reply.
+
+"But you are going to speak the truth," she continued, her voice low and
+vibrating, "that is splendid! It must have its effect, no matter what
+happens."
+
+"Do you feel that?" he asked, taking a step toward her.
+
+"Yes. When I see you, I feel it, I think." . . .
+
+Whatever answer he might have made to this was frustrated by the
+appearance of the figure of Nelson Langmaid in the doorway. He seemed
+to survey them benevolently through his spectacles.
+
+"How are you, Hodder? Well, Alison, I have to leave without seeing
+anything of you--you must induce your father not to bring his business
+home with him. Just a word," he added to the rector, "before you go up."
+
+Hodder turned to Alison. "Good night," he said.
+
+The gentle but unmistakable pressure of her hand he interpreted as the
+pinning on him of the badge of her faith. He was to go into battle
+wearing her colours. Their eyes met.
+
+"Good night," she answered . . . .
+
+In the hall the lawyer took his arm.
+
+"What's the trouble, Hodder?" he asked, sympathetically.
+
+Hodder, although on his guard, was somewhat taken aback by the directness
+of the onslaught.
+
+"I'm afraid, Mr. Langmaid," the rector replied, "that it would take me
+longer to tell you than the time at your disposal."
+
+"Dear me," said the lawyer, "this is too bad. Why didn't you come to me?
+I am a good friend of yours, Hodder, and there is an additional bond
+between us on my sister's account. She is extremely fond of you, you
+know. And I have a certain feeling of responsibility for you,--I brought
+you here."
+
+"You have always been very kind, and I appreciate it," Hodder replied.
+"I should be sorry to cause you any worry or annoyance. But you must
+understand that I cannot share the responsibility of my acts with any
+one."
+
+"A little advice from an old legal head is sometimes not out of place.
+Even Dr. Gilman used to consult me. I hope you will bear in mind how
+remarkably well you have been getting along at St. John's, and what a
+success you've made."
+
+"Success!" echoed the rector.
+
+Either Mr. Langmaid read nothing in his face, or was determined to read
+nothing.
+
+"Assuredly," he answered, benignly. "You have managed to please
+everybody, Mr. Parr included,--and some of us are not easy to please.
+I thought I'd tell you this, as a friend, as your first friend in the
+parish. Your achievement has been all the more remarkable, following,
+as you did, Dr. Gilman. Now it would greatly distress me to see that
+state of things disturbed, both for your sake and others. I thought I
+would just give you a hint, as you are going to see Mr. Parr, that he
+is in rather a nervous state. These so-called political reformers have
+upset the market and started a lot of legal complications that's why I'm
+here to-night. Go easy with him. I know you won't do anything foolish."
+
+The lawyer accompanied this statement with a pat, but this time he did
+not succeed in concealing his concern.
+
+"That depends on one's point of view," Hodder returned, with a smile.
+"I do not know how you have come to suspect that I am going to disturb
+Mr. Parr, but what I have to say to him is between him and me."
+
+Langmaid took up his hat from the table, and sighed.
+
+"Drop in on me sometime," he said, "I'd like to talk to you--Hodder heard
+a voice behind him, and turned. A servant was standing there.
+
+"Mr. Parr is ready to see you, sir," he said.
+
+The rector followed him up the stairs, to the room on the second floor,
+half office, half study, where the capitalist transacted his business
+when at home.
+
+
+
+III
+
+Eldon Parr was huddled over his desk reading a typewritten document; but
+he rose, and held out his hand, which Hodder took.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Hodder? I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but
+matters of some legal importance have arisen on which I was obliged to
+make a decision. You're well, I hope." He shot a glance at the rector,
+and sat down again, still holding the sheets. "If you will excuse me a
+moment longer, I'll finish this."
+
+"Certainly," Hodder replied.
+
+"Take a chair," said Mr. Parr, "you'll find the evening paper beside
+you."
+
+Hodder sat down, and the banker resumed his perusal of the document, his
+eye running rapidly over the pages, pausing once in a while to scratch
+out a word or to make a note on the margin. In the concentration of the
+man on the task before him the rector read a design, an implication that
+the affairs of the Church were of a minor importance: sensed, indeed,
+the new attitude of hostility, gazed upon the undiscovered side, the
+dangerous side before which other men had quailed. Alison's words
+recurred to him, "they are afraid of you, they will crush you if they
+can." Eldon Parr betrayed, at any rate, no sign of fear. If his mental
+posture were further analyzed, it might be made out to contain an
+intimation that the rector, by some act, had forfeited the right
+to the unique privilege of the old relationship.
+
+Well, the fact that the banker had, in some apparently occult manner,
+been warned, would make Hodder's task easier--or rather less difficult.
+His feelings were even more complicated than he had anticipated. The
+moments of suspense were trying to his nerves, and he had a shrewd notion
+that this making men wait was a favourite manoeuvre of Eldon Parr's; nor
+had he underrated the benumbing force of that personality. It was
+evident that the financier intended him to open the battle, and he was
+--as he had expected--finding it difficult to marshal the regiments of his
+arguments. In vain he thought of the tragedy of Garvin . . . . The
+thing was more complicated. And behind this redoubtable and sinister
+Eldon Parr he saw, as it were, the wraith of that: other who had once
+confessed the misery of his loneliness. . . .
+
+At last the banker rang, sharply, the bell on his desk. A secretary
+entered, to whom he dictated a telegram which contained these words:
+"Langmaid has discovered a way out." It was to be sent to an address in
+Texas. Then he turned in his chair and crossed his knees, his hand
+fondling an ivory paper-cutter. He smiled a little.
+
+"Well, Mr. Hodder," he said.
+
+The rector, intensely on his guard, merely inclined his head in
+recognition that his turn had come.
+
+"I was sorry," the banker continued, after a perceptible pause,--that
+you could not see your way clear to have come with me on the cruise."
+
+"I must thank you again," Hodder answered, "but I felt--as I wrote you
+--that certain matters made it impossible for me to go."
+
+"I suppose you had your reasons, but I think you would have enjoyed the
+trip. I had a good, seaworthy boat--I chartered her from Mr. Lieber, the
+president of the Continental Zinc, you know. I went as far as Labrador.
+A wonderful coast, Mr. Hodder."
+
+"It must be," agreed the rector. It was clear that Mr. Parr intended to
+throw upon him the onus of the first move. There was a silence, brief,
+indeed, but long enough for Hodder to feel more and more distinctly the
+granite hardness which the other had become, to experience a rising,
+reenforcing anger. He went forward, steadily but resolutely, on the
+crest of it. "I have remained in the city," he continued, "and I have had
+the opportunity to discover certain facts of which I have hitherto been
+ignorant, and which, in my opinion, profoundly affect the welfare of the
+church. It is of these I wished to speak to you."
+
+Mr. Parr waited.
+
+"It is not much of an exaggeration to say that ever since I came here
+I have been aware that St. John's, considering the long standing of the
+parish, the situation of the church in a thickly populated district, is
+not fulfilling its mission. But I have failed until now to perceive the
+causes of that inefficiency."
+
+"Inefficiency?" The banker repeated the word.
+
+"Inefficiency," said Hodder. "The reproach, the responsibility is
+largely mine, as the rector, the spiritual, head of the parish. I
+believe I am right when I say that the reason for the decision, some
+twenty years ago, to leave the church where it is, instead of selling the
+property and building in the West End, was that it might minister to the
+poor in the neighbourhood, to bring religion and hope into their lives,
+and to exert its influence towards eradicating the vice and misery which
+surround it."
+
+"But I thought you had agreed," said Mr. Parr, coldly, "that we were to
+provide for that in the new chapel and settlement house."
+
+"For reasons which I hope to make plain to you, Mr. Parr," Hodder
+replied, "those people can never be reached, as they ought to be reached,
+by building that settlement house. The principle is wrong, the day is
+past when such things can be done--in that way." He laid an emphasis on
+these words. "It is good, I grant you, to care for the babies and
+children of the poor, it is good to get young women and men out of the
+dance-halls, to provide innocent amusement, distraction, instruction.
+But it is not enough. It leaves the great, transforming thing in the
+lives of these people untouched, and it will forever remain untouched so
+long as a sense of wrong, a continually deepening impression of an
+unchristian civilization upheld by the Church herself, exists. Such an
+undertaking as that settlement house--I see clearly now--is a palliation,
+a poultice applied to one of many sores, a compromise unworthy of the
+high mission of the Church. She should go to the root of the disease.
+It is her first business to make Christians, who, by amending their own
+lives, by going out individually and collectively into the life of the
+nation, will gradually remove these conditions."
+
+Mr. Parr sat drumming on the table. Hodder met his look.
+
+"So you, too, have come to it," he said.
+
+"Have come to what?"
+
+"Socialism."
+
+Hodder, in the state of clairvoyance in which he now surprisingly found
+himself, accurately summed up the value and meaning of the banker's sigh.
+
+"Say, rather," he replied, "that I have come to Christianity. We shall
+never have what is called socialism until there is no longer any
+necessity for it, until men, of their owe free will, are ready to
+renounce selfish, personal ambition and power and work for humanity,
+for the state."
+
+Mr. Parr's gesture implied that he cared not by what name the thing was
+called, but he still appeared strangely, astonishingly calm;--Hodder,
+with all his faculties acute, apprehended that he was dangerously calm.
+The man who had formerly been his friend was now completely obliterated,
+and he had the feeling almost of being about to grapple, in mortal
+combat, with some unknown monster whose tactics and resources were
+infinite, whose victims had never escaped. The monster was in Eldon
+Parr--that is how it came to him. The waxy, relentless demon was
+aroused. It behooved him, Hodder, to step carefully . . . .
+
+"That is all very fine, Mr. Hodder, very altruistic, very Christian,
+I've no doubt-but the world doesn't work that way." (These were the
+words borne in on Hodder's consciousness.) "What drives the world is the
+motive furnished by the right of acquiring and holding property. If we
+had a division to-day, the able men would come out on top next year."
+
+The rector shook his head. He remembered, at that moment, Horace
+Bentley.
+
+"What drives the world is a far higher motive, Mr. Parr, the motive
+with which have been fired the great lights of history, the motive of
+renunciation and service which is transforming governments, which is
+gradually making the world a better place in which to live. And we are
+seeing men and women imbued with it, rising in ever increasing numbers on
+every side to-day."
+
+"Service!" Eldon Parr had seized upon the word as it passed and held it.
+"What do you think my life has been? I suppose," he said, with a touch
+of intense bitterness, "that you, too, who six months ago seemed as
+reasonable a man as I ever met, have joined in the chorus of
+denunciators. It has become the fashion to-day, thanks to your
+socialists, reformers, and agitators, to decry a man because he is rich,
+to take it for granted that he is a thief and a scoundrel, that he has no
+sense of responsibility for his country and his fellow-men. The glory,
+the true democracy of this nation, lies in its equal opportunity for all.
+They take no account of that, of the fact that each has had the same
+chance as his fellows. No, but they cry out that the man who, by the
+sweat of his brow, has earned wealth ought to divide it up with the lazy
+and the self-indulgent and the shiftless.
+
+"Take my case, for instance,--it is typical of thousands. I came to this
+city as a boy in my teens, with eight dollars in my pocket which I had
+earned on a farm. I swept the floor, cleaned the steps, moved boxes and
+ran errands in Gabriel Parker's store on Third Street. I was
+industrious, sober, willing to do anything. I fought, I tell you every
+inch of my way. As soon as I saved a little money I learned to use every
+ounce of brain I possessed to hold on to it. I trusted a man once, and I
+had to begin all over again. And I discovered, once for all, if a man
+doesn't look out for himself, no one will.
+
+"I don't pretend that I am any better than any one else, I have had to
+take life as I found it, and make the best of it. I conformed to the
+rules of the game; I soon had sense enough knocked into me to understand
+that the conditions were not of my making. But I'll say this for
+myself," Eldon Parr leaned forward over the blotter, "I had standards,
+and I stuck by them. I wanted to be a decent citizen, to bring up my
+children in the right way. I didn't squander my money, when I got it, on
+wine and women, I respected other men's wives, I supported the Church and
+the institutions of the city. I too even I had my ambitions, my ideals
+--and they were not entirely worldly ones. You would probably accuse me of
+wishing to acquire only the position of power which I hold. If you had
+accepted my invitation to go aboard the yacht this summer, it was my
+intention to unfold to you a scheme of charities which has long been
+forming in my mind, and which I think would be of no small benefit to the
+city where I have made my fortune. I merely mention this to prove to you
+that I am not unmindful, in spite of the circumstances of my own life,
+of the unfortunates whose mental equipment is not equal to my own."
+
+By this "poor boy" argument which--if Hodder had known--Mr. Parr had
+used at banquets with telling effect, the banker seemed to regain
+perspective and equilibrium, to plant his feet once more on the
+rock of the justification of his life, and from which, by a somewhat
+extraordinary process he had not quite understood, he had been partially
+shaken off. As he had proceeded with his personal history, his manner
+had gradually become one of the finality of experience over theory,
+of the forbearance of the practical man with the visionary. Like most
+successful citizens of his type, he possessed in a high degree the
+faculty of creating sympathy, of compelling others to accept
+--temporarily, at least--his point of view. It was this faculty, Hodder
+perceived, which had heretofore laid an enchantment upon him, and it was
+not without a certain wonder that he now felt himself to be released from
+the spell.
+
+The perceptions of the banker were as keen, and his sense of security was
+brief. Somehow, as he met the searching eye of the rector, he was unable
+to see the man as a visionary, but beheld--and, to do him justice--felt a
+twinge of respect for an adversary worthy of his steel.
+
+He, who was accustomed to prepare for clouds when they were mere specks
+on his horizon, paused even now to marvel why he had not dealt with this.
+Here was a man--a fanatic, if he liked--but still a man who positively
+did not fear him, to whom his wrath and power were as nothing! A new and
+startling and complicated sensation--but Eldon Parr was no coward. If he
+had, consciously or unconsciously, formerly looked upon the clergyman as
+a dependent, Hodder appeared to be one no more. The very ruggedness of
+the man had enhanced, expanded--as it were--until it filled the room.
+And Hodder had, with an audacity unparalleled in the banker's experience
+arraigned by implication his whole life, managed to put him on the
+defensive.
+
+"But if that be your experience," the rector said, "and it has become
+your philosophy, what is it in you that impels you to give these large
+sums for the public good?"
+
+"I should suppose that you, as a clergyman, might understand that my
+motive is a Christian one."
+
+Hodder sat very still, but a higher light came into his eyes.
+
+"Mr. Parr," he replied, "I have been a friend of yours, and I am a friend
+still. And what I am going to tell you is not only in the hope that
+others may benefit, but that your own soul may be saved. I mean that
+literally--your own soul. You are under the impression that you are a
+Christian, but you are not and never have been one. And you will not be
+one until your whole life is transformed, until you become a different
+man. If you do not change, it is my duty to warn you that the sorrow and
+suffering, the uneasiness which you now know, and which drive you on, in
+search of distraction, to adding useless sums of money to your fortune
+--this suffering, I say, will become intensified. You will die in the
+knowledge of it, and live on after, in the knowledge of it."
+
+In spite of himself, the financier drew back before this unexpected
+blast, the very intensity of which had struck a chill of terror in his
+inmost being. He had been taken off his guard,--for he had supposed the
+day long past--if it had ever existed--when a spiritual rebuke would
+upset him; the day long past when a minister could pronounce one with
+any force. That the Church should ever again presume to take herself
+seriously had never occurred to him. And yet--the man had denounced him
+in a moment of depression, of nervous irritation and exasperation against
+a government which had begun to interfere with the sacred liberty of its
+citizens, against political agitators who had spurred that government on.
+The world was mad. No element, it seemed, was now content to remain in
+its proper place. His voice, as he answered, shook with rage,--all the
+greater because the undaunted sternness by which it was confronted seemed
+to reduce it to futility.
+
+"Take care!" he cried, "take care! You, nor any other man, clergyman or
+no clergyman, have any right to be the judge of my conduct."
+
+"On the contrary," said Holder, "if your conduct affects the welfare, the
+progress, the reputation of the church of which I am rector, I have the
+right. And I intend to exercise it. It becomes my duty, however
+painful, to tell you, as a member of the Church, wherein you have
+wronged the Church and wronged yourself."
+
+He didn't raise his tone, and there was in it more of sorrow than of
+indignation. The banker turned an ashen gray . . A moment elapsed
+before he spoke, a transforming moment. He suddenly became ice.
+
+"Very well," he said. "I can't pretend to account for these astounding
+views you have acquired--and I am using a mild term. Let me say this:
+(he leaned forward a little, across the desk) I demand that you be
+specific. I am a busy man, I have little time to waste, I have certain
+matters--before me which must be attended to to-night. I warn you that
+I will not listen any longer to vague accusations."
+
+It was Holder's turn to marvel. Did Eldon Purr, after all; have no sense
+of guilt? Instantaneously, automatically, his own anger rose.
+
+"You may be sure, Mr. Parr, that I should not be here unless I were
+prepared to be specific. And what I am going to say to you I have
+reserved for your ear alone, in the hope that you will take it to heart,
+while it is not yet too late, said amend your life accordingly."
+
+Eldon Parr shifted slightly. His look became inscrutable, was riveted on
+the rector.
+
+"I shall call your attention first to a man of whom you have probably
+never heard. He is dead now--he threw himself into the river this
+summer, with a curse on his lips--I am afraid--a curse against you. A
+few years ago he lived happily with his wife and child in a little house
+on the Grade Suburban, and he had several thousand dollars as a result of
+careful saving and systematic self-denial.
+
+"Perhaps you have never thought of the responsibilities of a great name.
+This man, like thousands of others in the city, idealized you. He looked
+up to you as the soul of honour, as a self-made man who by his own
+unaided efforts--as you yourself have just pointed out--rose from a poor
+boy to a position of power and trust in the community. He saw you a
+prominent layman in the Church of God. He was dazzled by the brilliancy
+of your success, inspired by a civilization which--gave such
+opportunities. He recognized that he himself had not the brains for such
+an achievement,--his hope and love and ambition were centred in his boy."
+
+At the word Eldon Parr's glance was suddenly dulled by pain. He
+tightened his lips.
+
+"That boy was then of a happy, merry disposition, so the mother says, and
+every summer night as she cooked supper she used to hear him laughing as
+he romped in the yard with his father. When I first saw him this summer,
+it was two days before his father committed suicide. The child was
+lying, stifled with the heat, in the back room of one of those desolate
+lodging houses in Dalton Street, and his little body had almost wasted
+away.
+
+"While I was there the father came in, and when he saw me he was filled
+with fury. He despised the Church, and St. John's above all churches,
+because you were of it; because you who had given so generously to it had
+wrecked his life. You had shattered his faith in humanity, his ideal.
+From a normal, contented man he had deteriorated into a monomaniac whom
+no one would hire, a physical and mental wreck who needed care and
+nursing. He said he hoped the boy would die.
+
+"And what had happened? The man had bought, with all the money he had
+in the world, Consolidated Tractions. He had bought it solely because
+of his admiration for your ability, his faith in your name. It was
+inconceivable to him that a man of your standing, a public benefactor, a
+supporter of church and charities, would permit your name to be connected
+with any enterprise that was not sound and just. Thousands like Garvin
+lost all they had, while you are still a rich man. It is further
+asserted that you sold out all your stock at a high price, with the
+exception of that in the leased lines, which are guaranteed heavy
+dividends."
+
+"Have you finished?" demanded Eldon Parr.
+
+"Not quite, on this subject," replied the rector. "Two nights after
+that, the man threw himself in the river. His body was pulled out by men
+on a tugboat, and his worthless stock certificate was in his pocket. It
+is now in the possession of Mr. Horace Bentley. Thanks to Mr. Bentley,
+the widow found a temporary home, and the child has almost recovered."
+
+Hodder paused. His interest had suddenly become concentrated upon the
+banker's new demeanour, and he would not have thought it within the range
+of possibility that a man could listen to such a revelation concerning
+himself without the betrayal of some feeling. But so it was,--Eldon Parr
+had been coldly attentive, save for the one scarcely perceptible tremor
+when the boy was mentioned. His interrogatory gesture gave the very
+touch of perfection to this attitude, since it proclaimed him to have
+listened patiently to a charge so preposterous that a less reasonable man
+would have cut it short.
+
+"And what leads you to suppose," he inquired, "that I am responsible in
+this matter? What leads you to infer that the Consolidated Tractions
+Company was not organized in good faith? Do you think that business men
+are always infallible? The street-car lines of this city were at sixes
+and sevens, fighting each other; money was being wasted by poor
+management. The idea behind the company was a public-spirited one, to
+give the citizens cheaper and better service, by a more modern equipment,
+by a wider system of transfer. It seems to me, Mr. Hodder, that you put
+yourself in a more quixotic position than the so-called reformers when
+you assume that the men who organize a company in good faith are
+personally responsible for every share of stock that is sold, and for
+the welfare of every individual who may buy the stock. We force no one
+to buy it. They do so at their own risk. I myself have thousands of
+dollars of worthless stock in my safe. I have never complained."
+
+The full force of Hodder's indignation went into his reply.
+
+"I am not talking about the imperfect code of human justice under which
+we live, Mr. Parr," he cried. "This is not a case in which a court of
+law may exonerate you, it is between you and your God. But I have taken
+the trouble to find out, from unquestioned sources, the truth about the
+Consolidated Tractions Company--I shall not go into the details at
+length--they are doubtless familiar to you. I know that the legal genius
+of Mr. Langmaid, one of my vestry, made possible the organization of the
+company, and thereby evaded the plain spirit of the law of the state.
+I know that one branch line was bought for two hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars, and capitalized for three millions, and that most of the others
+were scandalously over-capitalized. I know that while the coming
+transaction was still a secret, you and other, gentlemen connected with
+the matter bought up large interests in other lines, which you proceeded
+to lease to yourselves at guaranteed dividends which these lines do not
+earn. I know that the first large dividend was paid out of capital. And
+the stock which you sold to poor Garvin was so hopelessly watered that it
+never could have been anything but worthless. If, in spite of these
+facts, you do not deem yourself responsible for the misery which has been
+caused, if your conscience is now clear, it is my duty to tell you that
+there is a higher bar of justice."
+
+The intensity of the fire of the denunciation had, indeed, a momentary
+yet visible effect in the banker's expression. Whatever the emotions
+thus lashed to self-betrayal, anger, hatred,--fear, perhaps, Hodder could
+not detect a trace of penitence; and he was aware, on the part of the
+other, of a supreme, almost spasmodic effort for self-control. The
+constitutional reluctance of Eldon Parr to fight openly could not have
+been more clearly demonstrated.
+
+"Because you are a clergyman, Mr. Hodder," he began, "because you are
+the rector of St. John's, I have allowed you to say things to me which
+I would not have permitted from any other man. I have tried to take
+into account your point of view, which is naturally restricted, your
+pardonable ignorance of what business men, who wish to do their duty by
+Church and State, have to contend with. When you came to this parish you
+seemed to have a sensible, a proportional view of things; you were
+content to confine your activities to your own sphere, content not to
+meddle with politics and business, which you could, at first hand, know
+nothing about. The modern desire of clergymen to interfere in these
+matters has ruined the usefulness of many of them.
+
+"I repeat, I have tried to be patient. I venture to hope, still, that
+this extraordinary change in you may not be permanent, but merely the
+result of a natural sympathy with the weak and unwise and unfortunate who
+are always to be found in a complex civilization. I can even conceive
+how such a discovery must have shocked you, temporarily aroused your
+indignation, as a clergyman, against the world as it is--and, I may add,
+as it has always been. My personal friendship for you, and my interest
+in your future welfare impel me to make a final appeal to you not to ruin
+a career which is full of promise."
+
+The rector did not take advantage of the pause. A purely psychological
+curiosity hypnotized him to see how far the banker would go in his
+apparent generosity.
+
+"I once heard you say, I believe, in a sermon, that the Christian
+religion is a leaven. It is the leaven that softens and ameliorates the
+hard conditions of life, that makes our relations with our fellow-men
+bearable. But life is a contest, it is war. It always has been, and
+always will be. Business is war, commerce is war, both among nations and
+individuals. You cannot get around it. If a man does not exterminate
+his rivals they will exterminate him. In other days churches were built
+and endowed with the spoils of war, and did not disdain the money.
+To-day they cheerfully accept the support and gifts of business men.
+I do not accuse them of hypocrisy. It is a recognition on their part
+that business men, in spite of hard facts, are not unmindful of the
+spiritual side of life, and are not deaf to the injunction to help
+others. And when, let me ask you, could you find in the world's history
+more splendid charities than are around us to-day? Institutions endowed
+for medical research, for the conquest of deadly diseases? libraries,
+hospitals, schools--men giving their fortunes for these things, the
+fruits of a life's work so laboriously acquired? Who can say that the
+modern capitalist is not liberal, is not a public benefactor?
+
+"I dislike being personal, but you have forced it upon me. I dislike to
+refer to what I have already done in the matter of charities, but I
+hinted to you awhile ago of a project I have conceived and almost
+perfected of gifts on a much larger scale than I have ever attempted."
+The financier stared at him meaningly. "And I had you in mind as one of
+the three men whom I should consult, whom I should associate with myself
+in the matter. We cannot change human nature, but we can better
+conditions by wise giving. I do not refer now to the settle ment house,
+which I am ready to help make and maintain as the best in the country,
+but I have in mind a system to be carried out with the consent and aid
+of the municipal government, of play-grounds, baths, parks, places of
+recreation, and hospitals, for the benefit of the people, which will
+put our city in the very forefront of progress. And I believe, as a
+practical man, I can convince you that the betterment which you and I so
+earnestly desire can be brought about in no other way. Agitation can
+only result in anarchy and misery for all."
+
+Hodder's wrath, as he rose from his chair, was of the sort that appears
+incredibly to add to the physical stature,--the bewildering spiritual
+wrath which is rare indeed, and carries all before it.
+
+"Don't tempt me, Mr. Parr!" he said. "Now that I know the truth, I tell
+you frankly I would face poverty and persecution rather than consent to
+your offer. And I warn you once more not to flatter yourself that
+existence ends here, that you will, not be called to answer for every
+wrong act you have committed in accumulating your fortune, that what
+you call business is an affair of which God takes no account. What
+I say may seem foolishness to you, but I tell you, in the words of that
+Foolishness, that it will not profit you to gain the whole world and lose
+your own soul. You remind me that the Church in old time accepted gifts
+from the spoils of war, and I will add of rapine and murder. And the
+Church to-day, to repeat your own parallel, grows rich with money
+wrongfully got. Legally? Ah, yes, legally, perhaps. But that will not
+avail you. And the kind of church you speak of--to which I, to my shame,
+once consented--Our Lord repudiates. It is none of his. I warn you, Mr.
+Parr, in his Name, first to make your peace with your brothers before you
+presume to lay another gift on the altar."
+
+During this withering condemnation of himself Eldon Parr sat motionless,
+his face grown livid, an expression on it that continued to haunt Hodder
+long afterwards. An expression, indeed, which made the banker almost
+unrecognizable.
+
+"Go," he whispered, his hand trembling visibly as he pointed towards the
+door. "Go--I have had enough of this."
+
+"Not until I have said one thing more," replied the rector, undaunted.
+"I have found the woman whose marriage with your son you prevented, whom
+you bought off and started on the road to hell without any sense of
+responsibility. You have made of her a prostitute and a drunkard.
+Whether she can be rescued or not is problematical. She, too, is in
+Mr. Bentley's care, a man upon whom you once showed no mercy. I leave
+Garvin, who has gone to his death, and Kate Marcy and Horace Bentley to
+your conscience, Mr. Parr. That they are representative of many others,
+I do not doubt. I tell you solemnly that the whole meaning of life is
+service to others, and I warn you, before it is too late, to repent and
+make amends. Gifts will not help you, and charities are of no avail."
+
+At the reference to Kate Marcy Eldon Parr's hand dropped to his side.
+He seemed to have physical difficulty in speaking.
+
+"Ah, you have found that woman!" He leaned an elbow on the desk,
+he seemed suddenly to have become weary, spent, old. And Hodder,
+as he watched him, perceived--that his haggard look was directed towards
+a photograph in a silver frame on the table--a photograph of Preston
+Parr. At length he broke the silence.
+
+"What would you have had me do?" he asked. "Permit my son to marry a
+woman of the streets, I suppose. That would have been Christianity,
+according to your notion. Come now, what world you have done, if your
+son had been in question?"
+
+A wave of pity swept over the rector.
+
+"Why," he said, why did you have nothing but cruelty in your heart, and
+contempt for her? When you saw that she was willing, for the love of the
+son whom you loved, to give up all that life meant to her, how could you
+destroy her without a qualm? The crime you committed was that you
+refused to see God in that woman's soul, when he had revealed himself to
+you. You looked for wile, for cunning, for self-seeking,--and they were
+not there. Love had obliterated them. When you saw how meekly she
+obeyed you, and agreed to go away, why did you not have pity? If you
+had listened to your conscience, you would have known what to do.
+
+"I do not say that you should not have opposed the marriage--then.
+Marriage is not to be lightly entered into. From the moment you went to
+see her you became responsible for her. You hurled her into the abyss,
+and she has come back to haunt you. You should have had her educated and
+cared for--she would have submitted, to any plan you proposed. And if,
+after a sensible separation, you became satisfied as to her character and
+development, and your son still wished to marry her, you should have
+withdrawn your objections.
+
+"As it is, and in consequence of your act, you have lost your son. He
+left you then, and you have no more control over him."
+
+"Stop!" cried Eldon Parr, "for God's sake stop! I won't stand any more
+of this. I will not listen to criticism of my life, to strictures on my
+conduct from you or any other man." He reached for a book on the corner
+of his desk--a cheque book.--"You'll want money for these people, I
+suppose," he added brutally. "I will give it, but it must be understood
+that I do not recognize any right of theirs to demand it."
+
+For a moment Holder did not trust himself to reply. He looked down
+across the desk at the financier, who was fumbling with the leaves.
+
+"They do not demand it, Mr. Parr," he answered, gently. "And I have
+tried to make it plain to you that you have lost the right to give it.
+I expected to fail in this. I have failed."
+
+"What do you mean?" Eldon Parr let the cheque book close.
+
+"I mean what I said," the rector replied. "That if you would save your
+soul you must put an end, to-morrow, to the acquisition of money, and
+devote the rest of your life to an earnest and sincere attempt to make
+just restitution to those you have wronged. And you must ask the
+forgiveness of God for your sins. Until you do that, your charities are
+abominations in his sight. I will not trouble you any longer, except to
+say that I shall be ready to come to you at any time my presence may be
+of any help to you."
+
+The banker did not speak . . . . With a single glance towards the
+library Holder left the house, but paused for a moment outside to gaze
+back at it, as it loomed in the darkness against the stars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ALISON GOES TO CHURCH
+
+
+I
+
+On the following Sunday morning the early light filtered into Alison's
+room, and she opened her strong eyes. Presently she sprang from her bed
+and drew back the curtains of the windows, gazing rapturously into the
+crystal day. The verdure of the Park was freshened to an incredible
+brilliancy by the dew, a thin white veil of mist was spread over the
+mirror of the waters, the trees flung long shadows across the turf.
+
+A few minutes later she was out, thrilled by the silence, drawing in
+deep, breaths of the morning air; lingering by still lakes catching the
+blue of the sky--a blue that left its stain upon the soul; as the sun
+mounted she wandered farther, losing herself in the wilderness of the
+forest.
+
+At eight o'clock, when she returned, there were signs that the city had
+awakened. A mounted policeman trotted past her as she crossed a gravel
+drive, and on the tree-flecked stretches, which lately had been empty as
+Eden, human figures were scattered. A child, with a sailboat that
+languished for lack of wind, stared at her, first with fascination and
+wonder in his eyes, and then smiled at her tentatively. She returned the
+smile with a start.
+
+Children had stared at her like that before now, and for the first time
+in her life she asked herself what the look might mean. She had never
+really been fond of them: she had never, indeed, been brought much in
+contact with them. But now, without warning, a sudden fierce yearning
+took possession of her: surprised and almost frightened, she stopped
+irresistibly and looked back at the thin little figure crouched beside
+the water, to discover that his widened eyes were still upon her. Her
+own lingered on him shyly, and thus for a moment she hung in doubt
+whether to flee or stay, her heart throbbing as though she were on the
+brink of some unknown and momentous adventure. She took a timid step.
+
+"What's your name?" she asked.
+
+The boy told her.
+
+"What's yours?" he ventured, still under the charm.
+
+"Alison."
+
+He had never heard of that name, and said so. They deplored the lack of
+wind. And presently, still mystified, but gathering courage, he asked
+her why she blushed, at which her colour deepened.
+
+"I can't help it," she told him.
+
+"I like it," the boy said.
+
+Though the grass was still wet, she got down on her knees in her white
+skirt, the better to push the boat along the shore: once it drifted
+beyond their reach, and was only rescued by a fallen branch discovered
+with difficulty.
+
+The arrival of the boy's father, an anaemic-looking little man, put an
+end to their play. He deplored the condition of the lady's dress.
+
+"It doesn't matter in the least," she assured him, and fled in a mood she
+did not attempt to analyze. Hurrying homeward, she regained her room,
+bathed, and at half past eight appeared in the big, formal dining-room,
+from which the glare of the morning light was carefully screened. Her
+father insisted on breakfasting here; and she found him now seated before
+the white table-cloth, reading a newspaper. He glanced up at her
+critically.
+
+"So you've decided to honour me this morning," he said.
+
+"I've been out in the Park," she replied, taking the chair opposite him.
+He resumed his reading, but presently, as she was pouring out the coffee,
+he lowered the paper again.
+
+"What's the occasion to-day?" he asked.
+
+"The occasion?" she repeated, without acknowledging that she had
+instantly grasped his implication. His eyes were on her gown.
+
+"You are not accustomed, as a rule, to pay much deference to Sunday."
+
+"Doesn't the Bible say, somewhere," she inquired, "that the Sabbath was
+made for man? Perhaps that may be broadened after a while, to include
+woman."
+
+"But you have never been an advocate, so far as I know, of women taking
+advantage of their opportunity by going to Church."
+
+"What's the use," demanded Alison, "of the thousands of working women
+spending the best part of the day in the ordinary church, when their feet
+and hands and heads are aching? Unless some fire is kindled in their
+souls, it is hopeless for them to try to obtain any benefit from
+religion--so-called--as it is preached to them in most churches."
+
+"Fire in their souls!" exclaimed the banker.
+
+"Yes. If the churches offered those who might be leaders among their
+fellows a practical solution of existence, kindled their self-respect,
+replaced a life of drudgery by one of inspiration--that would be worth
+while. But you will never get such a condition as that unless your
+pulpits are filled by personalities, instead of puppets who are all cast
+in one mould, and who profess to be there by divine right."
+
+"I am glad to see at least that you are taking an interest in religious
+matters," her father observed, meaningly.
+
+Alison coloured. But she retorted with spirit.
+
+"That is true of a great many persons to-day who are thinking on the
+subject. If Christianity is a solution of life, people are demanding of
+the churches that they shall perform their function, and show us how, and
+why, or else cease to encumber the world."
+
+Eldon Parr folded up his newspaper.
+
+"So you are going to Church this morning," he said.
+
+"Yes. At what time will you be ready?"
+
+"At quarter to eleven. But if you are going to St. John', you will have
+to start earlier. I'll order a car at half past ten."
+
+"Where are you going?" She held her breath, unconsciously, for the
+answer.
+
+"To Calvary," he replied coldly, as he rose to leave the room. "But I
+hesitate to ask you to come,--I am afraid you will not find a religion
+there that suits you."
+
+For a moment she could not trust herself to speak. The secret which,
+ever since Friday evening, she had been burning to learn was disclosed
+. . . Her father had broken with Mr. Hodder!
+
+"Please don't order the motor for me," she said. "I'd rather go in the
+street cars."
+
+She sat very still in the empty room, her face burning.
+
+Characteristically, her father had not once mentioned the rector of St.
+John's, yet had contrived to imply that her interest in Hodder was
+greater than her interest in religion. And she was forced to admit, with
+her customary honesty, that the implication was true.
+
+
+The numbers who knew Alison Parr casually thought her cold. They admired
+a certain quality in her work, but they did not suspect that that quality
+was the incomplete expression of an innate idealism capable of being
+fanned into flame,--for she was subject to rare but ardent enthusiasms
+which kindled and transformed her incredibly in the eyes of the few to
+whom the process had been revealed. She had had even a longer list of
+suitors than any one guessed; men who--usually by accident--had touched
+the hidden spring, and suddenly beholding an unimagined woman, had
+consequently lost their heads. The mistake most of them had made (for
+subtlety in such affairs is not a masculine trait) was the failure to
+recognize and continue to present the quality in them which had awakened
+her. She had invariably discovered the feet of clay.
+
+Thus disillusion had been her misfortune--perhaps it would be more
+accurate to say her fortune. She had built up, after each invasion, her
+defences more carefully and solidly than before, only to be again
+astonished and dismayed by the next onslaught, until at length the
+question had become insistent--the question of an alliance for purposes
+of greater security. She had returned to her childhood home to consider
+it, frankly recognizing it as a compromise, a fall . . . .
+
+And here, in this sanctuary of her reflection, and out of a quarter on
+which she had set no watch, out of a wilderness which she had believed to
+hold nothing save the ruined splendours of the past, had come one who,
+like the traditional figures of the wilderness, had attracted her by his
+very uncouthness and latent power. And the anomaly he presented in what
+might be called the vehemence of his advocacy of an outworn orthodoxy,
+in his occupation of the pulpit of St. John's, had quickened at once her
+curiosity and antagonism. It had been her sudden discovery, or rather
+her instinctive suspicion of the inner conflict in him which had set her
+standard fluttering in response. Once more (for the last time--something
+whispered--now) she had become the lady of the lists; she sat on her
+walls watching, with beating heart and straining eyes, the closed helm
+of her champion, ready to fling down the revived remnant of her faith as
+prize or forfeit. She had staked all on the hope that he would not lower
+his lance. . . . .
+
+Saturday had passed in suspense . . . . And now was flooding in on
+her the certainty that he had not failed her; that he had, with a sublime
+indifference to a worldly future and success, defied the powers. With
+indifference, too, to her! She knew, of course, that he loved her.
+A man with less of greatness would have sought a middle way . . . .
+
+When, at half past ten, she fared forth into the sunlight, she was filled
+with anticipation, excitement, concern, feelings enhanced and not soothed
+by the pulsing vibrations of the church bells in the softening air. The
+swift motion of the electric car was grateful. . . But at length the
+sight of familiar landmarks, old-fashioned dwellings crowded in between
+the stores and factories of lower Tower Street, brought back
+recollections of the days when she had come this way, other Sunday
+mornings, and in a more leisurely public vehicle, with her mother.
+Was it possible that she, Alison Parr, were going to church now? Her
+excitement deepened, and she found it difficult to bring herself to the
+realization that her destination was a church--the church of her
+childhood. At this moment she could only think of St. John's as the
+setting of the supreme drama.
+
+When she alighted at the corner of Burton Street there was the
+well-remembered, shifting group on the pavement in front of the church
+porch. How many times, in the summer and winter, in fair weather and
+cloudy, in rain and sleet and snow had she approached that group, as she
+approached it now! Here were the people, still, in the midst of whom her
+earliest associations had been formed, changed, indeed,-but yet the same.
+No, the change was in her, and the very vastness of that change came as a
+shock. These had stood still, anchored to their traditions, while she
+--had she grown? or merely wandered? She had searched, at least, and seen.
+She had once accepted them--if indeed as a child it could have been said
+of her that she accepted anything; she had been unable then, at any rate,
+to bring forward any comparisons.
+
+Now she beheld them, collectively, in their complacent finery, as
+representing a force, a section of the army blocking the heads of the
+passes of the world's progress, resting on their arms, but ready at the
+least uneasy movement from below to man the breastworks, to fling down
+the traitor from above, to fight fiercely for the solidarity of their
+order. And Alison even believed herself to detect, by something
+indefinable in their attitudes as they stood momentarily conversing
+in lowered voices, an aroused suspicion, an uneasy anticipation. Her
+imagination went so far as to apprehend, as they greeted her unwonted
+appearance, that they read in it an addition to other vague and
+disturbing phenomena. Her colour was high.
+
+"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Atterbury, "I thought you had gone back to New
+York long ago!"
+
+Beside his mother stood Gordon--more dried up, it seemed, than ever.
+Alison recalled him, as on this very spot, a thin, pale boy in short
+trousers, and Mrs. Atterbury a beautiful and controlled young matron
+associated with St. John's and with children's parties. She was
+wonderful yet, with her white hair and straight nose, her erect figure
+still slight. Alison knew that Mrs. Atterbury had never forgiven her for
+rejecting her son--or rather for being the kind of woman who could reject
+him.
+
+"Surely you haven't been here all summer?"
+
+Alison admitted it, characteristically, without explanations.
+
+"It seems so natural to see you here at the old church, after all these
+years," the lady went on, and Alison was aware that Mrs. Atterbury
+questioned--or rather was at a loss for the motives which had led such an
+apostate back to the fold. "We must thank Mr. Hodder, I suppose. He's
+very remarkable. I hear he is resuming the services to-day for the first
+time since June."
+
+Alison was inclined to read a significance into Mrs. Atterbury's glance
+at her son, who was clearing his throat.
+
+"But--where is Mr. Parr?" he asked. "I understand he has come back from
+his cruise."
+
+"Yes, he is back. I came without--him---as you see."
+
+She found a certain satisfaction in adding to the mystification, to the
+disquietude he betrayed by fidgeting more than usual.
+
+"But--he always comes when he is in town. Business--I suppose--ahem!"
+
+"No," replied Alison, dropping her bomb with cruel precision, "he has
+gone to Calvary."
+
+The agitation was instantaneous.
+
+"To Calvary!" exclaimed mother and son in one breath.
+
+"Why?" It was Gordon who demanded. "A--a special occasion there--a
+bishop or something?"
+
+"I'm afraid you must ask him," she said.
+
+She was delayed on the steps, first by Nan Ferguson, then by the
+Laureston Greys, and her news outdistanced her to the porch. Charlotte
+Plimpton looking very red and solid, her eyes glittering with excitement,
+blocked her way.
+
+"Alison?" she cried, in the slightly nasal voice that was a Gore
+inheritance, "I'm told your father's gone to Calvary! Has Mr. Hodder
+offended him? I heard rumours--Wallis seems to be afraid that something
+has happened."
+
+"He hasn't said anything about it to me, Charlotte," said Alison, in
+quiet amusement, "but then he wouldn't, you know. I don't live here any
+longer, and he has no reason to think that I would be interested in
+church matters."
+
+"But--why did you come?" Charlotte demanded, with Gore naivete.
+
+Alison smiled.
+
+"You mean--what was my motive?"
+
+Charlotte actually performed the miracle of getting redder. She was
+afraid of Alison--much more afraid since she had known of her vogue in
+the East. When Alison had put into execution the astounding folly (to
+the Gore mind) of rejecting the inheritance of millions to espouse a
+profession, it had been Charlotte Plimpton who led the chorus of ridicule
+and disapproval. But success, to the Charlotte Plimptons, is its own
+justification, and now her ambition (which had ramifications) was to have
+Alison "do" her a garden. Incidentally, the question had flashed through
+her mind as to how much Alison's good looks had helped towards her
+triumph in certain shining circles.
+
+"Oh, of course I didn't mean that," she hastened to deny, although it was
+exactly what she had meant. Her curiosity unsatisfied--and not likely to
+be satisfied at once, she shifted abruptly to the other burning subject.
+"I was so glad when I learned you hadn't gone. Grace Larrabbee's garden
+is a dream, my dear. Wallis and I stopped there the other day and the
+caretaker showed it to us. Can't you make a plan for me, so that I may
+begin next spring? And there's something else I wanted to ask you.
+Wallis and I are going to New York the end of the month. Shall you be
+there?"
+
+"I don't know," said Alison, cautiously.
+
+"We want so much to see one or two of your gardens on Long Island, and
+especially the Sibleys', on the Hudson. I know it will be late in the
+season,--but don't you think you could take us, Alison? And I intend to
+give you a dinner. I'll write you a note. Here's Wallis."
+
+"Well, well, well," said Mr. Plimpton, shaking Alison's hand. "Where's
+father? I hear he's gone to Calvary."
+
+Alison made her escape. Inside the silent church, Eleanor Goodrich gave
+her a smile and a pressure of welcome. Beside her, standing behind the
+rear pew, were Asa Waring and--Mr. Bentley! Mr. Bentley returned to St.
+John's!
+
+"You have come!" Alison whispered.
+
+He understood her. He took her hand in his and looked down into her
+upturned face.
+
+"Yes, my dear," he said, "and my girls have come Sally Grover and the
+others, and some friends from Dalton Street and elsewhere."
+
+The news, the sound of this old gentleman's voice and the touch of his
+hand suddenly filled her with a strange yet sober happiness. Asa Waring,
+though he had not overheard, smiled at her too, as in sympathy. His
+austere face was curiously illuminated, and she knew instinctively that
+in some way he shared her happiness. Mr. Bentley had come back! Yes, it
+was an augury. From childhood she had always admired Asa Waring, and now
+she felt a closer tie . . . .
+
+She reached the pew, hesitated an instant, and slipped forward on her
+knees. Years had gone by since she had prayed, and even now she made no
+attempt to translate into words the intensity of her yearning--for what?
+Hodder's success, for one thing,--and by success she meant that he might
+pursue an unfaltering course. True to her temperament, she did not look
+for the downfall of the forces opposed to him. She beheld him
+persecuted, yet unyielding, and was thus lifted to an exaltation that
+amazed. . . If he could do it, such a struggle must sorely have an
+ultimate meaning! Thus she found herself, trembling, on the borderland
+of faith. . .
+
+She arose, bewildered, her pulses beating. And presently glancing about,
+she took in that the church was fuller than she ever remembered having
+seen it, and the palpitating suspense she felt seemed to pervade, as it
+were, the very silence. With startling abruptness, the silence was
+broken by the tones of the great organ that rolled and reverberated among
+the arches; distant voices took up the processional; the white choir
+filed past,--first the treble voices of the boys, then the deeper notes
+of the--men,--turned and mounted the chancel steps, and then she saw
+Hodder. Her pew being among the first, he passed very near her. Did he
+know she would be there? The sternness of his profile told her nothing.
+He seemed at that moment removed, set apart, consecrated--this was the
+word that came to her, and yet she was keenly conscious of his presence.
+
+Tingling, she found herself repeating, inwardly, two, lines of the hymn
+
+          "Lay hold on life, and it shall be
+          Thy joy and crown eternally."
+
+"Lay hold on life!"
+
+The service began,--the well-remembered, beautiful appeal and prayers
+which she could still repeat, after a lapse of time, almost by heart; and
+their music and rhythm, the simple yet magnificent language in which.
+they were clothed--her own language--awoke this morning a racial instinct
+strong in her,--she had not known how strong. Or was it something in
+Hodder's voice that seemed to illumine the ancient words with a new
+meaning? Raising her eyes to the chancel she studied his head, and found
+in it still another expression of that race, the history of which had
+been one of protest, of development of its own character and personality.
+Her mind went back to her first talk with him, in the garden, and she saw
+how her intuition had recognized in him then the spirit of a people
+striving to assert itself.
+
+She stood with tightened lips, during the Apostles' Creed, listening to
+his voice as it rose, strong and unfaltering, above the murmur of the
+congregation.
+
+At last she saw him swiftly crossing the chancel, mounting the pulpit
+steps, and he towered above her, a dominant figure, his white surplice
+sharply outlined against the dark stone of the pillar. The hymn died
+away, the congregation sat down. There was a sound in the church,
+expectant, presaging, like the stirring of leaves at the first breath of
+wind, and then all was silent.
+
+
+
+II
+
+He had preached for an hour--longer, perhaps. Alison could not have said
+how long. She had lost all sense of time.
+
+No sooner had the text been spoken, "Except a man be born again, he
+cannot see the Kingdom of God," than she seemed to catch a fleeting
+glimpse of an hitherto unimagined Personality. Hundreds of times she
+had heard those words, and they had been as meaningless to her as to
+Nicodemus. But now--now something was brought home to her of the
+magnificent certainty with which they must first have been spoken,
+of the tone and bearing and authority of him who had uttered them.
+Was Christ like that? And could it be a Truth, after all, a truth
+only to be grasped by one who had experienced it?
+
+It was in vain that man had tried to evade this, the supreme revelation
+of Jesus Christ, had sought to substitute ceremonies and sacrifices for
+spiritual rebirth. It was in vain that the Church herself had, from time
+to time, been inclined to compromise. St. Paul, once the strict Pharisee
+who had laboured for the religion of works, himself had been reborn into
+the religion of the Spirit. It was Paul who had liberated that message
+of rebirth, which the world has been so long in grasping, from the narrow
+bounds of Palestine and sent it ringing down the ages to the democracies
+of the twentieth century.
+
+And even Paul, though not consciously inconsistent, could not rid himself
+completely of that ancient, automatic, conception of religion which the
+Master condemned, but had on occasions attempted fruitlessly to unite the
+new with the old. And thus, for a long time, Christianity had been
+wrongly conceived as history, beginning with what to Paul and the Jews
+was an historical event, the allegory of the Garden of Eden, the fall of
+Adam, and ending with the Jewish conception of the Atonement. This was a
+rationalistic and not a spiritual religion.
+
+The miracle was not the vision, whatever its nature, which Saul beheld on
+the road to Damascus. The miracle was the result of that vision, the man
+reborn. Saul, the persecutor of Christians, become Paul, who spent the
+rest of his days, in spite of persecution and bodily infirmities,
+journeying tirelessly up and down the Roman Empire, preaching the risen
+Christ, and labouring more abundantly than they all! There was no
+miracle in the New Testament more wonderful than this.
+
+The risen Christ! Let us not trouble ourselves about the psychological
+problems involved, problems which the first century interpreted in its
+own simple way. Modern, science has taught us this much, at least,
+that we have by no means fathomed the limits even of a transcendent
+personality. If proofs of the Resurrection and Ascension were demanded,
+let them be spiritual proofs, and there could be none more convincing
+than the life of the transformed Saul, who had given to the modern,
+western world the message of salvation . . . .
+
+That afternoon, as Alison sat motionless on a distant hillside of the
+Park, gazing across the tree-dotted, rolling country to the westward, she
+recalled the breathless silence in the church when he had reached this
+point and paused, looking down at the congregation. By the subtle
+transmission of thought, of feeling which is characteristic at dramatic
+moments of bodies of people, she knew that he had already contrived to
+stir them to the quick. It was not so much that these opening words
+might have been startling to the strictly orthodox, but the added fact
+that Hodder had uttered them. The sensation in the pews, as Alison
+interpreted it and exulted over it, was one of bewildered amazement that
+this was their rector, the same man who had preached to them in June.
+Like Paul, of whom he spoke, he too was transformed, had come to his own,
+radiating a new power that seemed to shine in his face.
+
+Still agitated, she considered that discourse now in her solitude, what
+it meant for him, for her, for the Church and civilization that a
+clergyman should have had the courage to preach it. He himself had
+seemed unconscious of any courage; had never once--she recalled--been
+sensational. He had spoken simply, even in the intensest moments of
+denunciation. And she wondered now how he had managed, without stripping
+himself, without baring the intimate, sacred experiences of his own soul,
+to convey to them, so nobly, the change which had taken place in him....
+
+He began by referring to the hope with which he had come to St. John's,
+and the gradual realization that the church was a failure--a dismal
+failure when compared to the high ideal of her Master. By her fruits she
+should be known and judged. From the first he had contemplated, with a
+heavy heart, the sin and misery at their very gates. Not three blocks
+distant children were learning vice in the streets, little boys of seven
+and eight, underfed and anaemic, were driven out before dawn to sell
+newspapers, little girls thrust forth to haunt the saloons and beg, while
+their own children were warmed and fed. While their own daughters were
+guarded, young women in Dayton Street were forced to sell themselves into
+a life which meant slow torture, inevitable early death. Hopeless
+husbands and wives were cast up like driftwood by the cruel, resistless
+flood of modern civilization--the very civilization which yielded their
+wealth and luxury. The civilization which professed the Spirit of
+Christ, and yet was pitiless.
+
+He confessed to them that for a long time he had been blind to the truth,
+had taken the inherited, unchristian view that the disease which caused
+vice and poverty might not be cured, though its ulcers might be
+alleviated. He had not, indeed, clearly perceived and recognized the
+disease. He had regarded Dalton Street in a very special sense as a
+reproach to St. John's, but now he saw that all such neighbourhoods were
+in reality a reproach to the city, to the state, to the nation. True
+Christianity and Democracy were identical, and the congregation of St.
+John's, as professed Christians and citizens, were doubly responsible,
+inasmuch as they not only made no protest or attempt to change a
+government which permitted the Dalton Streets to exist, but inasmuch also
+as,--directly or indirectly,--they derived a profit from conditions which
+were an abomination to God. It would be but an idle mockery for them to
+go and build a settlement house, if they did not first reform their
+lives.
+
+Here there had been a decided stir among the pews. Hodder had not seemed
+to notice it.
+
+When he, their rector, had gone to Dalton Street to invite the poor and
+wretched into God's Church, he was met by the scornful question: "Are the
+Christians of the churches any better than we? Christians own the grim
+tenements in which we live, the saloons and brothels by which we are
+surrounded, which devour our children. Christians own the establishments
+which pay us starvation wages; profit by politics, and take toll from our
+very vice; evade the laws and reap millions, while we are sent to jail.
+Is their God a God who will lift us out of our misery and distress? Are
+their churches for the poor? Are not the very pews in which they sit as
+closed to us as their houses?"
+
+"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert
+cold or hot."
+
+One inevitable conclusion of such a revelation was that he had not
+preached to them the vital element of Christianity. And the very fact
+that his presentation of religion had left many indifferent or
+dissatisfied was proof-positive that he had dwelt upon non-essentials,
+laid emphasis upon the mistaken interpretations of past ages. There
+were those within the Church who were content with this, who--like the
+Pharisees of old--welcomed a religion which did not interfere with their
+complacency, with their pursuit of pleasure and wealth, with their
+special privileges; welcomed a Church which didn't raise her voice
+against the manner of their lives--against the order, the Golden Calf
+which they had set up, which did not accuse them of deliberately
+retarding the coming of the Kingdom of God.
+
+Ah, that religion was not religion, for religion was a spiritual,
+not a material affair. In that religion, vainly designed by man as a
+compromise between God and Mammon, there was none of the divine
+discontent of the true religion of the Spirit, no need of the rebirth of
+the soul. And those who held it might well demand, with Nicodemus and
+the rulers of the earth, "How can these things be?"
+
+And there were others who still lingered in the Church, perplexed and
+wistful, who had come to him and confessed that the so-called catholic
+acceptance of divine truths, on which he had hitherto dwelt, meant
+nothing to them. To these, in particular, he owed a special reparation,
+and he took this occasion to announce a series of Sunday evening sermons
+on the Creeds. So long as the Creeds remained in the Prayer Book it was
+his duty to interpret them in terms not only of modern thought, but in
+harmony with the real significance of the Person and message of Jesus
+Christ. Those who had come to him questioning, he declared, were a
+thousand times right in refusing to accept the interpretations of other
+men, the consensus of opinion of more ignorant ages, expressed in an
+ancient science and an archaic philosophy.
+
+And what should be said of the vast and ever increasing numbers of those
+not connected with the Church, who had left it or were leaving it? and of
+the less fortunate to whose bodily wants they had been ministering in the
+parish house, for whom it had no spiritual message, and who never entered
+its doors? The necessity of religion, of getting in touch with, of
+dependence on the Spirit of the Universe was inherent in man, and yet
+there were thousands--nay, millions in the nation to-day in whose hearts
+was an intense and unsatisfied yearning, who perceived no meaning in
+life, no Cause for which to work, who did not know what Christianity was,
+who had never known what it was, who wist not where to turn to find out.
+Education had brought many of them to discern, in the Church's teachings,
+an anachronistic medley of myths and legends, of theories of schoolmen
+and theologians, of surviving pagan superstitions which could not be
+translated into life. They saw, in Christianity, only the adulterations
+of the centuries. If any one needed a proof of the yearning people felt,
+let him go to the bookshops, or read in the publishers' lists to-day the
+announcements of books on religion. There was no supply where there was
+no demand.
+
+Truth might no longer be identified with Tradition, and the day was past
+when councils and synods might determine it for all mankind. The era of
+forced acceptance of philosophical doctrines and dogmas was past, and
+that of freedom, of spiritual rebirth, of vicarious suffering, of willing
+sacrifice and service for a Cause was upon them. That cause was
+Democracy. Christ was uniquely the Son of God because he had lived and
+suffered and died in order to reveal to the world the meaning of this
+life and of the hereafter--the meaning not only for the individual, but
+for society as well. Nothing might be added to or subtracted from that
+message--it was complete.
+
+True faith was simply trusting--trusting that Christ gave to the world
+the revelation of God's plan. And the Saviour himself had pointed out
+the proof: "If any man do his will, he shall know of the doctrine,
+whether it be of God, or whether I speak for myself." Christ had
+repeatedly rebuked those literal minds which had demanded material
+evidence: true faith spurned it, just as true friendship, true love
+between man and man, true trust scorned a written bond. To paraphrase
+St. James's words, faith without trust is dead--because faith without
+trust is impossible. God is a Spirit, only to be recognized in the
+Spirit, and every one of the Saviour's utterances were--not of the flesh,
+of the man--but of the Spirit within him. "He that hath seen me hath
+seen the Father;" and "Why callest thou me good? none is good save one,
+that is, God." The Spirit, the Universal Meaning of Life, incarnate in
+the human Jesus.
+
+To be born again was to overcome our spiritual blindness, and then,
+and then only, we might behold the spirit shining in the soul of Christ.
+That proof had sufficed for Mark, had sufficed for the writer of the
+sublime Fourth Gospel, had sufficed for Paul. Let us lift this wondrous
+fact, once and for all, out of the ecclesiastical setting and incorporate
+it into our lives. Nor need the hearts of those who seek the Truth, who
+fear not to face it, be troubled if they be satisfied, from the Gospels,
+that the birth of Jesus was not miraculous. The physical never could
+prove the spiritual, which was the real and everlasting, which no
+discovery in science or history can take from us. The Godship of Christ
+rested upon no dogma, it was a conviction born into us with the new
+birth. And it becomes an integral part of our personality, our very
+being.
+
+The secret, then, lay in a presentation of the divine message which would
+convince and transform and electrify those who heard it to action--a
+presentation of the message in terms which the age could grasp. That is
+what Paul had done, he had drawn his figures boldly from the customs of
+the life of his day, but a more or less intimate knowledge of these
+ancient customs were necessary before modern men and women could
+understand those figures and parallels. And the Church must awake
+to her opportunities, to her perception of the Cause. . . .
+
+What, then, was the function, the mission of the Church Universal? Once
+she had laid claim to temporal power, believed herself to be the sole
+agency of God on earth, had spoken ex cathedra on philosophy, history,
+theology, and science, had undertaken to confer eternal bliss and to damn
+forever. Her members, and even her priests, had gone from murder to
+mass and from mass to murder, and she had engaged in cruel wars and
+persecutions to curtail the liberties of mankind. Under that conception
+religion was a form of insurance of the soul. Perhaps a common,
+universal belief had been necessary in the dark ages before the sublime
+idea of education for the masses had come; but the Church herself
+--through ignorance--had opposed the growth of education, had set her
+face sternly against the development of the individual, which Christ had
+taught, the privilege of man to use the faculties of the intellect which
+God had bestowed upon him. He himself, their rector, had advocated a
+catholic acceptance, though much modified from the mediaeval acceptance,
+--one that professed to go behind it to an earlier age. Yes, he must
+admit with shame that he had been afraid to trust where God trusted, had
+feared to confide the working out of the ultimate Truth of the minds of
+the millions.
+
+The Church had been monarchical in form, and some strove stubbornly
+and blindly to keep her monarchical. Democracy in government was
+outstripping her. Let them look around, to-day, and see what was
+happening in the United States of America. A great movement was going on
+to transfer actual participation in government from the few to the many,
+--a movement towards true Democracy, and that was precisely what was
+about to happen in the Church. Her condition at present was one of
+uncertainty, transition--she feared to let go wholly of the old, she
+feared to embark upon the new. Just as the conservatives and politicians
+feared to give up the representative system, the convention, so was she
+afraid to abandon the synod, the council, and trust to man.
+
+The light was coming slowly, the change, the rebirth of the Church by
+gradual evolution. By the grace of God those who had laid the
+foundations of the Church in which he stood, of all Protestantism, had
+built for the future. The racial instinct in them had asserted itself,
+had warned them that to suppress freedom in religion were to suppress it
+in life, to paralyze that individual initiative which was the secret of
+their advancement.
+
+The new Church Universal, then, would be the militant, aggressive body of
+the reborn, whose mission it was to send out into the life of the nation
+transformed men and women who would labour unremittingly for the Kingdom
+of God. Unity would come--but unity in freedom, true Catholicity. The
+truth would gradually pervade the masses--be wrought out by them. Even
+the great evolutionary forces of the age, such as economic necessity,
+were acting to drive divided Christianity into consolidation, and the
+starving churches of country villages were now beginning to combine.
+
+No man might venture to predict the details of the future organization of
+the united Church, although St. Paul himself had sketched it in broad
+outline: every worker, lay and clerical, labouring according to his gift,
+teachers, executives, ministers, visitors, missionaries, healers of sick
+and despondent souls. But the supreme function of the Church was to
+inspire--to inspire individuals to willing service for the cause, the
+Cause of Democracy, the fellowship of mankind. If she failed to inspire,
+the Church would wither and perish. And therefore she must revive again
+the race of inspirers, prophets, modern Apostles to whom this gift was
+given, going on their rounds, awaking cities and arousing whole
+country-sides.
+
+But whence--it might be demanded by the cynical were the prophets to
+come? Prophets could not be produced by training and education; prophets
+must be born. Reborn,--that was the word. Let the Church have faith.
+Once her Cause were perceived, once her whole energy were directed
+towards its fulfilment, the prophets would arise, out of the East and out
+of the West, to stir mankind to higher effort, to denounce fearlessly the
+shortcomings and evils of the age. They had not failed in past ages,
+when the world had fallen into hopelessness, indifference, and darkness.
+And they would not fail now.
+
+Prophets were personalities, and Phillips Brooks himself a prophet--had
+defined personality as a conscious relationship with God. "All truth,"
+he had said, "comes to the world through personality." And down the ages
+had come an Apostolic Succession of personalities. Paul, Augustine,
+Francis, Dante, Luther, Milton,--yes, and Abraham Lincoln, and Phillips
+Brooks, whose Authority was that of the Spirit, whose light had so shone
+before men that they had glorified the Father which was in heaven; the
+current of whose Power had so radiated, in ever widening circles, as to
+make incandescent countless other souls.
+
+And which among them would declare that Abraham Lincoln, like Stephen,
+had not seen his Master in the sky?
+
+The true prophet, the true apostle, then, was one inspired and directed
+by the Spirit, the laying on of hands was but a symbol,--the symbol of
+the sublime truth that one personality caught fire from another. Let the
+Church hold fast to that symbol, as an acknowledgment, a reminder of a
+supreme mystery. Tradition had its value when it did not deteriorate
+into superstition, into the mechanical, automatic transmission
+characteristic of the mediaeval Church, for the very suggestion of which
+Peter had rebuked Simon in Samaria. For it would be remembered that
+Simon had said: "Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands,
+he may receive the Holy Ghost."
+
+The true successor to the Apostles must be an Apostle himself.
+
+Jesus had seldom spoken literally, and the truths he sought to impress
+upon the world had of necessity been clothed in figures and symbols,--for
+spiritual truths might be conveyed in no other way. The supreme proof of
+his Godship, of his complete knowledge of the meaning of life was to be
+found in his parables. To the literal, material mind, for example, the
+parable of the talents was merely an unintelligible case of injustice....
+What was meant by the talents? They were opportunities for service.
+Experience taught us that when we embraced one opportunity, one
+responsibility, the acceptance of it invariably led to another, and so
+the servant who had five talents, five opportunities, gained ten. The
+servant who had two gained two more. But the servant of whom only one
+little service was asked refused that, and was cast into outer darkness,
+to witness another performing the task which should have been his. Hell,
+here and hereafter, was the spectacle of wasted opportunity, and there is
+no suffering to compare to it.
+
+The crime, the cardinal sin was with those who refused to serve, who shut
+their eyes to the ideal their Lord had held up, who strove to compromise
+with Jesus Christ himself, to twist and torture his message to suit their
+own notions as to how life should be led; to please God and Mammon at the
+same time, to bind Christ's Church for their comfort and selfish
+convenience. Of them it was written, that they shut up the Kingdom of
+Heaven against men; for they neither go in themselves, neither suffer
+them that are entering to go in. Were these any better than the people
+who had crucified the Lord for his idealism, and because he had not
+brought them the material Kingdom for which they longed?
+
+That servant who had feared to act, who had hid his talent in the ground,
+who had said unto his lord, "I knew thee that thou art an hard man,
+reaping where thou hadst not sown," was the man without faith, the
+atheist who sees only cruelty and indifference in the order of things,
+who has no spiritual sight. But to the other servants it was said, "Thou
+halt been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many
+things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord."
+
+The meaning of life, then, was service, and by life our Lord did not mean
+mere human existence, which is only a part of life. The Kingdom of
+heaven is a state, and may begin here. And that which we saw around us
+was only one expression of that eternal life--a medium to work through,
+towards God. All was service, both here and hereafter, and he that had
+not discovered that the joy of service was the only happiness worth
+living for could have no conception of the Kingdom. To those who knew,
+there was no happiness like being able to say, "I have found my place in
+God's plan, I am of use." Such was salvation . . . .
+
+And in the parable of the Prodigal Son may be read the history of what
+are known as the Protestant nations. What happens logically when the
+individual is suddenly freed from the restraint of external authority
+occurred when Martin Luther released the vital spark of Christianity,
+which he got from Paul, and from Christ himself--the revelation of
+individual responsibility, that God the Spirit would dwell, by grace, in
+the individual soul. Ah, we had paid a terrible yet necessary price for
+freedom. We had wandered far from the Father, we had been reduced to
+the very husks of individualism, become as swine. We beheld around us,
+to-day, selfishness, ruthless competition, as great contrasts between
+misery and luxury as in the days of the Roman Empire. But should we, for
+that reason, return to the leading-strings of authority? Could we if we
+would? A little thought ought to convince us that the liberation of the
+individual could not be revoked, that it had forever destroyed the power
+of authority to carry conviction. To go back to the Middle Ages would be
+to deteriorate and degenerate. No, we must go on. . . .
+
+Luther's movement, in religion, had been the logical forerunner of
+democracy, of universal suffrage in government, the death-knell of that
+misinterpretation of Christianity as the bulwark of monarchy and
+hierarchy had been sounded when he said, "Ich kann nicht anders!" The new
+Republic founded on the western continent had announced to the world the
+initiation of the transfer of Authority to the individual soul. God, the
+counterpart of the King, the ruler in a high heaven of a flat terrestrial
+expanse, outside of the world, was now become the Spirit of a million
+spheres, the indwelling spirit in man. Democracy and the religion of
+Jesus Christ both consisted in trusting the man--yes, and the woman--whom
+God trusts. Christianity was individualism carried beyond philosophy
+into religion, and the Christian, the ideal citizen of the democracy, was
+free since he served not because he had to, but because he desired to of
+his own will, which, paradoxically, is God's will. God was in politics,
+to the confusion of politicians; God in government. And in some greater
+and higher sense than we had yet perceived, the saying 'vox populi vox
+dei' was eternally true. He entered into the hearts of people and moved
+them, and so the world progressed. It was the function of the Church to
+make Christians, until--when the Kingdom of God should come--the blending
+should be complete. Then Church and State would be identical, since all
+the members of the one would be the citizens of the other . . . .
+
+"I will arise and go to my father." Rebirth! A sense of responsibility,
+of consecration. So we had come painfully through our materialistic
+individualism, through our selfish Protestantism, to a glimpse of the
+true Protestantism--Democracy.
+
+Our spiritual vision was glowing clearer. We were beginning to perceive
+that charity did not consist in dispensing largesse after making a
+fortune at the expense of one's fellow-men; that there was something
+still wrong in a government that permits it. It was gradually becoming
+plain to us, after two thousand years, that human bodies and souls
+rotting in tenements were more valuable than all the forests on all the
+hills; that government, Christian government, had something to do with
+these.
+
+We should embody, in government, those sublime words of the Master,
+"Suffer little children to come unto me." And the government of the
+future would care for the little children. We were beginning to do it.
+Here, as elsewhere, Christianity and reason went hand in hand, for the
+child became the man who either preyed on humanity and filled the prisons
+and robbed his fellows, or else grew into a useful, healthy citizen. It
+was nothing less than sheer folly as well as inhuman cruelty to let the
+children sleep in crowded, hot rooms, reeking with diseases, and run wild
+throughout the long summer, learning vice in the city streets. And we
+still had slavery--economic slavery--yes, and the more horrible slavery
+of women and young girls in vice--as much a concern of government as the
+problem which had confronted it in 1861 . . . . We were learning that
+there was something infinitely more sacred than property . . . .
+
+And now Alison recalled, only to be thrilled again by an electric
+sensation she had never before experienced with such intensity, the look
+of inspiration on the preacher's face as he closed. The very mists of
+the future seemed to break before his importuning gaze, and his eyes
+seemed indeed to behold, against the whitening dawn of the spiritual age
+he predicted, the slender spires of a new Church sprung from the
+foundations of the old. A Church, truly catholic, tolerant, whose
+portals were wide in welcome to all mankind. The creative impulse,
+he had declared, was invariably religious, the highest art but the
+expression of the mute yearnings of a people, of a race. Thus had once
+arisen, all over Europe, those wonderful cathedrals which still cast
+their spell upon the world, and art to-day would respond--was responding
+--to the unutterable cravings of mankind, would strive once more to
+express in stone and glass and pigment what nations felt. Generation
+after generation would labour with unflagging zeal until the art
+sculptured fragment of the new Cathedral--the new Cathedral of Democracy
+--pointed upward toward the blue vault of heaven. Such was his vision
+--God the Spirit, through man reborn, carrying out his great Design . . .
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+"WHICH SAY TO THE SEERS, SEE NOT"
+
+
+I
+
+As Alison arose from her knees and made her way out of the pew, it was
+the expression on Charlotte Plimpton's face which brought her back once
+more to a sense of her surroundings; struck her, indeed, like a physical
+blow. The expression was a scandalized one. Mrs. Plimpton had moved
+towards her, as if to speak, but Alison hurried past, her exaltation
+suddenly shattered, replaced by a rising tide of resentment, of angry
+amazement against a materialism so solid as to remain unshaken by the
+words which had so uplifted her. Eddies were forming in the aisle as
+the people streamed slowly out of the church, and snatches of their
+conversation, in undertones, reached her ears.
+
+"I should never have believed it!"
+
+"Mr. Hodder, of all men. . ."
+
+"The bishop!"
+
+Outside the swinging doors, in the vestibule, the voices were raised a
+little, and she found her path blocked.
+
+"It's incredible!" she heard Gordon Atterbury saying to little Everett
+Constable, who was listening gloomily.
+
+"Sheer Unitarianism, socialism, heresy."
+
+His attention was forcibly arrested by Alison, in whose cheeks bright
+spots of colour burned. He stepped aside, involuntarily, apologetically,
+as though he had instinctively read in her attitude an unaccountable
+disdain. Everett Constable bowed uncertainly, for Alison scarcely
+noticed them.
+
+"Ahem!" said Gordon, nervously, abandoning his former companion and
+joining her, "I was just saying, it's incredible--"
+
+She turned on him.
+
+"It is incredible," she cried, "that persons who call themselves
+Christians cannot recognize their religion when they hear it preached."
+
+He gave back before her, visibly, in an astonishment which would have
+been ludicrous but for her anger. He had never understood her--such
+had been for him her greatest fascination;--and now she was less
+comprehensible than ever. The time had been when he would cheerfully
+have given over his hope of salvation to have been able to stir her.
+He had never seen her stirred, and the sight of her even now in this
+condition was uncomfortably agitating. Of all things, an heretical
+sermon would appear to have accomplished this miracle!
+
+"Christianity!" he stammered.
+
+"Yes, Christianity." Her voice tingled. "I don't pretend to know much
+about it, but Mr. Hodder has at least made it plain that it is something
+more than dead dogmas, ceremonies, and superstitions."
+
+He would have said something, but her one thought was to escape, to be
+alone. These friends of her childhood were at that moment so distasteful
+as to have become hateful. Some one laid a hand upon her arm.
+
+"Can't we take you home, Alison? I don't see your motor."
+
+It was Mrs. Constable.
+
+"No, thanks--I'm going to walk," Alison answered, yet something in Mrs.
+Constable's face, in Mrs. Constable's voice, made her pause. Something
+new, something oddly sympathetic. Their eyes met, and Alison saw that
+the other woman's were tired, almost haggard--yet understanding.
+
+"Mr. Hodder was right--a thousand times right, my dear," she said.
+
+Alison could only stare at her, and the crimson in the bright spots of
+her cheeks spread over her face. Why had Mrs. Constable supposed that
+she would care to hear the sermon praised? But a second glance put her
+in possession of the extraordinary fact that Mrs. Constable herself was
+profoundly moved.
+
+"I knew he would change," she went on, "I have seen for some time that he
+was too big a man not to change. But I had no conception that he would
+have such power, and such courage, as he has shown this morning. It is
+not only that he dared to tell us what we were--smaller men might have
+done that, and it is comparatively easy to denounce. But he has the
+vision to construct, he is a seer himself--he has really made me see
+what Christianity is. And as long as I live I shall never forget
+those closing sentences."
+
+"And now?" asked Alison. "And now what will happen?"
+
+Mrs. Constable changed colour. Her tact, on which she prided herself,
+had deserted her in a moment of unlooked-for emotion.
+
+"Oh, I know that my father and the others will try to put him out--but
+can they?" Alison asked.
+
+It was Mrs. Constable's turn to stare. The head she suddenly and
+impulsively put forth trembled on Alison's wrist.
+
+"I don't know, Alison--I'm afraid they can. It is too terrible to think
+about. . . . And they can't--they won't believe that many changes are
+coming, that this is but one of many signs. . . Do come and see me."
+
+Alison left her, marvelling at the passage between them, and that, of all
+persons in the congregation of St. John's, the lightning should have
+struck Mrs. Constable. . .
+
+Turning to the right on Burton Street, she soon found herself walking
+rapidly westward through deserted streets lined by factories and
+warehouses, and silent in the Sabbath calm . . . . She thought of
+Hodder, she would have liked to go to him in that hour . . . .
+
+In Park Street, luncheon was half over, and Nelson Langmaid was at the
+table with her father. The lawyer glanced at her curiously as she
+entered the room, and his usual word of banter, she thought, was rather
+lame. The two went on, for some time, discussing a railroad suit in
+Texas. And Alison, as she hurried through her meal, leaving the dishes
+almost untouched, scarcely heard them. Once, in her reverie, her
+thoughts reverted to another Sunday when Hodder had sat, an honoured
+guest, in the chair which Mr. Langmaid now occupied . . . .
+
+It was not until they got up from the table that her father turned to
+her.
+
+"Did you have a good sermon?" he asked.
+
+It was the underlying note of challenge to which she responded.
+
+"The only good sermon I have ever heard."
+
+Their eyes met. Langmaid looked down at the tip of his cigar.
+
+"Mr. Hodder," said Eldon Parr, "is to be congratulated."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Hodder, when the service was over, had sought the familiar recess in the
+robing-room, the words which he himself had spoken still ringing in his
+ears. And then he recalled the desperate prayer with which he had
+entered the pulpit, that it might be given him in that hour what to say:
+the vivid memories of the passions and miseries in Dalton Street, the
+sudden, hot response of indignation at the complacency confronting him.
+His voice had trembled with anger . . . . He remembered, as he had
+paused in his denunciation of these who had eyes and saw not, meeting the
+upturned look of Alison Parr, and his anger had turned to pity for their
+blindness--which once had been his own; and he had gone on and on,
+striving to interpret for them his new revelation of the message of the
+Saviour, to impress upon them the dreadful yet sublime meaning of life
+eternal. And it was in that moment the vision of the meaning of the
+evolution of his race, of the Prodigal turning to responsibility--of
+which he once had had a glimpse--had risen before his eyes in its
+completeness--the guiding hand of God in history! The Spirit in these
+complacent souls, as yet unstirred . . . .
+
+So complete, now, was his forgetfulness of self, of his future, of the
+irrevocable consequences of the step he had taken, that it was only
+gradually he became aware that some one was standing near him, and
+with a start he recognized McCrae.
+
+"There are some waiting to speak to ye," his assistant said.
+
+"Oh!" Hodder exclaimed. He began, mechanically, to divest himself of his
+surplice. McCrae stood by.
+
+"I'd like to say a word, first--if ye don't mind--" he began.
+
+The rector looked at him quickly.
+
+"I'd like just to thank ye for that sermon--I can say no more now," said
+McCrae; he turned away, and left the room abruptly.
+
+This characteristic tribute from the inarticulate, loyal Scotchman left
+him tingling . . . . He made his way to the door and saw the people
+in the choir room, standing silently, in groups, looking toward him.
+Some one spoke to him, and he recognized Eleanor Goodrich.
+
+"We couldn't help coming, Mr. Hodder--just to tell you how much we admire
+you. It was wonderful, what you said."
+
+He grew hot with gratitude, with thankfulness that there were some who
+understood--and that this woman was among them, and her husband . . .
+Phil Goodrich took him by the hand.
+
+"I can understand that kind of religion," he said. "And, if necessary,
+I can fight for it. I have come to enlist."
+
+"And I can understand it, too," added the sunburned Evelyn. "I hope you
+will let me help."
+
+That was all they said, but Hodder understood. Eleanor Goodrich's eyes
+were dimmed as she smiled an her sister and her husband--a smile that
+bespoke the purest quality of pride. And it was then, as they made way
+for others, that the full value of their allegiance was borne in upon
+him, and he grasped the fact that the intangible barrier which had
+separated him from them had at last been broken down: His look followed
+the square shoulders and aggressive, close-cropped head of Phil Goodrich,
+the firm, athletic figure of Evelyn, who had represented to him an entire
+class of modern young women, vigorous, athletic, with a scorn of cant in
+which he secretly sympathized, hitherto frankly untouched by spiritual
+interests of any sort. She had, indeed, once bluntly told him that
+church meant nothing to her . . . .
+
+In that little company gathered in the choir room were certain members of
+his congregation whom, had he taken thought, he would least have expected
+to see. There were Mr. and Mrs. Bradley, an elderly couple who had
+attended St. John's for thirty years; and others of the same
+unpretentious element of his parish who were finding in modern life an
+increasingly difficult and bewildering problem. There was little Miss
+Tallant, an assiduous guild worker whom he had thought the most orthodox
+of persons; Miss Ramsay, who taught the children of the Italian mothers;
+Mr. Carton, the organist, a professed free-thinker, with whom Hodder had
+had many a futile argument; and Martha Preston, who told him that he had
+made her think about religion seriously for the first time in her life.
+
+And there were others, types equally diverse. Young men of the choir,
+and others whom he had never seen, who informed him shyly that they would
+come again, and bring their friends . . . .
+
+And all the while, in the background, Hodder had been aware of a familiar
+face--Horace Bentley's. Beside him, when at length he drew near, was his
+friend Asa Waring--a strangely contrasted type. The uncompromising eyes
+of a born leader of men flashed from beneath the heavy white eyebrows,
+the button of the Legion of Honour gleaming in his well-kept coat seemed
+emblematic of the fire which in his youth had driven him forth to fight
+for the honour of his country--a fire still undimmed. It was he who
+spoke first.
+
+"This is a day I never expected to see, Mr. Hodder," he said, "for it has
+brought back to this church the man to whom it owes its existence. Mr.
+Bentley did more, by his labour and generosity, his true Christianity,
+his charity and his wisdom, for St. John's than any other individual.
+It is you who have brought him back, and I wish personally to express
+my gratitude."
+
+Mr. Bentley, in mild reproof, laid his hand upon the t, shoulder of his
+old friend.
+
+"Ah, Asa," he protested, "you shouldn't say such things."
+
+"Had it not been for Mr. Bentley," Hodder explained, "I should not be
+here to-day."
+
+Asa Waring pierced the rector with his eye, appreciating the genuine
+feeling with which these words were spoken. And yet his look contained
+a question.
+
+"Mr. Bentley," Hodder added, "has been my teacher this summer."
+
+The old gentleman's hand trembled a little on the goldheaded stick.
+
+"It is a matter of more pride to me than I can express, sir, that you are
+the rector of this church with which my most cherished memories are
+associated," he said. "But I cannot take any part of the credit you give
+me for the splendid vision which you have raised up before us to-day, for
+your inspired interpretation of history, of the meaning of our own times.
+You have moved me, you have given me more hope and courage than I have
+had for many a long year--and I thank you, Mr. Hodder. I am sure that
+God will prosper and guide you in what you have so nobly undertaken."
+
+Mr. Bentley turned away, walking towards the end of the room . . . .
+Asa Waring broke the silence.
+
+"I didn't know that you knew him, that you had seen what he is doing
+--what he has done in this city. I cannot trust myself, Mr. Hodder, to
+speak of Horace Bentley's life. . . I feel too strongly on the
+subject. I have watched, year by year, this detestable spirit of greed,
+this lust for money and power creeping over our country, corrupting our
+people and institutions, and finally tainting the Church itself. You
+have raised your voice against it, and I respect and honour and thank you
+for it, the more because you have done it without resorting to sensation,
+and apparently with no thought of yourself. And, incidentally, you have
+explained the Christian religion to me as I have never had it explained
+in my life.
+
+"I need not tell you you have made enemies--powerful ones. I can see
+that you are a man, and that you are prepared for them. They will leave
+no stone unturned, will neglect no means to put you out and disgrace you.
+They will be about your ears to-morrow--this afternoon, perhaps. I need
+not remind you that the outcome is doubtful. But I came here to assure
+you of my friendship and support in all you hope to accomplish in making
+the Church what it should be. In any event, what you have done to-day
+will be productive of everlasting good."
+
+In a corner still lingered the group which Mr. Bentley had joined. And
+Hodder, as he made his way towards it, recognized the faces of some of
+those who composed it. Sally Grower was there, and the young women who
+lived in Mr. Bentley's house, and others whose acquaintance he had made
+during the summer. Mrs. Garvin had brought little Dicky, incredibly
+changed from the wan little figure he had first beheld in the stifling
+back room in Dalton Street; not yet robust, but freckled and tanned by
+the country sun and wind. The child, whom he had seen constantly in the
+interval, ran forward joyfully, and Hodder bent down to take his hand....
+
+These were his friends, emblematic of the new relationship in which he
+stood to mankind. And he owed them to Horace Bentley! He wondered, as
+he greeted them, whether they knew what their allegiance meant to him in
+this hour. But it sufficed that they claimed him as their own.
+
+Behind them all stood Kate Marcy. And it struck him for the first time,
+as he gazed at her earnestly, how her appearance had changed. She gave
+him a frightened, bewildered look, as though she were unable to identify
+him now with the man she had known in the Dalton Street flat, in the
+restaurant. She was still struggling, groping, wondering, striving to
+accustom herself to the higher light of another world.
+
+"I wanted to come," she faltered. "Sally Grower brought me. . . "
+
+Hodder went back with them to Dalton Street. His new ministry had begun.
+And on this, the first day of it, it was fitting that he should sit at
+the table of Horace Bentley, even as on that other Sunday, two years
+agone, he had gone to the home of the first layman of the diocese,
+Eldon Parr.
+
+
+
+III
+
+The peace of God passes understanding because sorrow and joy are mingled
+therein, sorrow and joy and striving. And thus the joy of emancipation
+may be accompanied by a heavy heart. The next morning, when Hodder
+entered his study, he sighed as his eye fell upon the unusual pile of
+letters on his desk, for their writers had once been his friends. The
+inevitable breach had come at last.
+
+Most of the letters, as he had anticipated, were painful reading.
+And the silver paper-cutter with which he opened the first had been a
+Christmas present from Mrs. Burlingame, who had penned it, a lady of
+signal devotion to the church, who for many years had made it her task to
+supply and arrange the flowers on the altar. He had amazed and wounded
+her--she declared--inexpressibly, and she could no longer remain at St.
+John's--for the present, at least. A significant addition. He dropped
+the letter, and sat staring out of the window . . . presently arousing
+himself, setting himself resolutely to the task of reading the rest.
+
+In the mood in which he found himself he did not atop to philosophize
+on the rigid yet sincere attitude of the orthodox. His affection for
+many of them curiously remained, though it was with some difficulty he
+strove to reconstruct a state of mind with which he had once agreed.
+If Christianity were to sweep on, these few unbending but faithful ones
+must be sacrificed: such was the law. . . Many, while repudiating his
+new beliefs--or unbeliefs!--added, to their regrets of the change in him,
+protestations of a continued friendship, a conviction of his sincerity.
+Others like Mrs. Atterbury, were frankly outraged and bitter. The
+contents of one lilac-bordered envelope brought to his eyes a faint
+smile. Did he know--asked the sender of this--could he know the
+consternation he had caused in so many persons, including herself?
+What was she to believe? And wouldn't he lunch with her on Thursday?
+
+Mrs. Ferguson's letter brought another smile--more thoughtful.
+Her incoherent phrases had sprung from the heart, and the picture rose
+before him of the stout but frightened, good-natured lady who had never
+accustomed herself to the enjoyment of wealth and luxury. Mr. Ferguson
+was in such a state, and he must please not tell her husband that she had
+written. Yet much in his sermon had struck her as so true. It seemed
+wrong to her to have so much, and others so little! And he had made her
+remember many things in her early life she had forgotten. She hoped he
+would see Mr. Ferguson, and talk to him. . . .
+
+Then there was Mrs. Constable's short note, that troubled and puzzled
+him. This, too, had in it an undercurrent of fear, and the memory came
+to him of the harrowing afternoon he had once spent with her, when she
+would have seemed to have predicted the very thing which had now happened
+to him. And yet not that thing. He divined instinctively that a maturer
+thought on the subject of his sermon had brought on an uneasiness as the
+full consequences of this new teaching had dawned upon her consequences
+which she had not foreseen when she had foretold the change. And he
+seemed to read between the lines that the renunciation he demanded was
+too great. Would he not let her come and talk to him? . . .
+
+Miss Brewer, a lady of no inconsiderable property, was among those who
+told him plainly that if he remained they would have to give up their
+pews. Three or four communications were even more threatening. Mr.
+Alpheus Gore, Mrs. Plimpton's brother, who at five and forty had managed
+to triple his share of the Gore inheritance, wrote that it would be his
+regretful duty to send to the bishop an Information on the subject of Mr.
+Hodder's sermon.
+
+There were, indeed, a few letters which he laid, thankfully, in a pile by
+themselves. These were mostly from certain humble members of his parish
+who had not followed their impulses to go to him after the service, or
+from strangers who had chanced to drop into the church. Some were
+autobiographical, such as those of a trained nurse, a stenographer,
+a hardware clerk who had sat up late Sunday night to summarize what that
+sermon had meant to him, how a gray and hopeless existence had taken on a
+new colour. Next Sunday he would bring a friend who lived in the same
+boarding house . . . . Hodder read every word of these, and all were
+in the same strain: at last they could perceive a meaning to religion,
+an application of it to such plodding lives as theirs . . . .
+
+One or two had not understood, but had been stirred, and were coming to
+talk to him. Another was filled with a venomous class hatred. . . .
+
+The first intimation he had of the writer of another letter seemed from
+the senses rather than the intellect. A warm glow suffused him, mounted
+to his temples as he stared at the words, turned over the sheet, and read
+at the bottom the not very legible signature. The handwriting, by no
+means classic, became then and there indelibly photographed on his brain,
+and summed up for him the characteristics, the warring elements in Alison
+Parr. "All afternoon," she wrote, "I have been thinking of your sermon.
+It was to me very wonderful--it lifted me out of myself. And oh, I want
+so much to believe unreservedly what you expressed so finely, that
+religion is democracy, or the motive power behind democracy--the service
+of humanity by the reborn. I understand it intellectually. I am willing
+to work for such a Cause, but there is something in me so hard that I
+wonder if it can dissolve. And then I am still unable to identify that
+Cause with the Church as at present constituted, with the dogmas and
+ceremonies that still exist. I am too thorough a radical to have your
+patience. And I am filled with rage--I can think of no milder word--on
+coming in contact with the living embodiments of that old creed, who hold
+its dogmas so precious. 'Which say to the seers, See not; and to the
+prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things,
+prophesy deceits.'"
+
+"You see, I have been reading Isaiah, and when I came to that paragraph
+it seemed so appropriate. These people have always existed. And will
+they not always continue to exist? I wish I could believe, wholly and
+unreservedly, that this class, always preponderant in the world, could be
+changed, diminished--done away with in a brighter future! I can, at
+least, sympathize with Isaiah's wrath.
+
+"What you said of the longing, the yearning which exists to-day amongst
+the inarticulate millions moved me most--and of the place of art in
+religion, to express that yearning. Religion the motive power of art,
+and art, too, service. 'Consider the lilies of the field.' You have made
+it, at least, all-comprehensive, have given me a new point of view for
+which I can never be sufficiently grateful--and at a time when I needed
+it desperately. That you have dared to do what you have done has been
+and will be an inspiration, not only to myself, but to many others.
+This, is a longer letter, I believe, than I have ever written in my life.
+But I wanted you to know."
+
+He reread it twice, pondering over its phrases. "A new point of view....
+at a time when I needed it desperately." It was not until then that he
+realized the full intensity of his desire for some expression from her
+since the moment he had caught sight of her in the church. But he had
+not been prepared for the unreserve, the impulsiveness with which she had
+actually written. Such was his agitation that he did not heed, at first,
+a knock on the door, which was repeated. He thrust the letter inside his
+coat as the janitor of the parish house appeared.
+
+"There is a gentleman to see you, sir, in the office," he said.
+
+Hodder went down the stairs. And he anticipated, from the light yet
+nervous pacing that he heard on the bare floor, that the visitor was none
+other than his vestryman, Mr. Gordon Atterbury. The sight of the
+gentleman's spruce figure confirmed the guess.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Atterbury," he said as he entered.
+
+Mr. Atterbury stopped in his steps, as if he had heard a shot.
+
+"Ah--good morning, Mr. Hodder. I stopped in on my way to the office."
+
+"Sit down," said the rector.
+
+Mr. Atterbury sat down, but with the air of a man who does so under
+protest, who had not intended to. He was visibly filled and almost
+quivering with an excitement which seemed to demand active expression,
+and which the tall clergyman's physical calm and self-possession seemed
+to augment. For a moment Mr. Atterbury stared at the rector as he sat
+behind his desk. Then he cleared his throat.
+
+"I thought of writing to you, Mr. Hodder. My mother, I believe, has done
+so. But it seemed to me, on second thought, better to come to you
+direct."
+
+The rector nodded, without venturing to remark on the wisdom of the
+course.
+
+"It occurred to me," Mr. Atterbury went on, "that possibly some things I
+wish to discuss might--ahem be dispelled in a conversation. That I might
+conceivably have misunderstood certain statements in your sermon of
+yesterday."
+
+"I tried," said the rector, "to be as clear as possible."
+
+"I thought you might not fully have realized the effect of what you said.
+I ought to tell you, I think, that as soon as I reached home I wrote out,
+as accurately as I could from memory, the gist of your remarks. And I
+must say frankly, although I try to put it mildly, that they appear to
+contradict and controvert the doctrines of the Church."
+
+"Which doctrines?" Hodder asked.
+
+Gordon Atterbury sputtered.
+
+"Which doctrines?" he repeated. "Can it be possible that you
+misunderstand me? I might refer you to those which you yourself preached
+as late as last June, in a sermon which was one of the finest and most
+scholarly efforts I ever heard."
+
+"It was on that day, Mr. Atterbury," replied the rector, with a touch of
+sadness in his voice, "I made the discovery that fine and scholarly
+efforts were not Christianity."
+
+"What do you mean?" Mr. Atterbury demanded.
+
+"I mean that they do not succeed in making Christians."
+
+"And by that you imply that the members of your congregation, those who
+have been brought up and baptized and confirmed in this church, are not
+Christians?"
+
+"I am sorry to say a great many of them are not," said the rector.
+
+"In other words, you affirm that the sacrament of baptism is of no
+account."
+
+"I affirm that baptism with water is not sufficient."
+
+"I'm afraid that this is very grave," Mr. Hodder.
+
+"I quite agree with you," replied the rector, looking straight at his
+vestryman.
+
+"And I understood,--" the other went on, clearing his throat once more,
+"I think I have it correctly stated in my notes, but I wish to be quite
+clear, that you denied the doctrine of the virgin birth."
+
+Hodder made a strong effort to control himself.
+
+"What I have said I have said," he answered, "and I have said it in the
+hope that it might make some impression upon the lives of those to whom I
+spoke. You were one of them, Mr. Atterbury. And if I repeat and amplify
+my meaning now, it must be understood that I have no other object except
+that of putting you in the way of seeing that the religion of Christ is
+unique in that it is dependent upon no doctrine or dogma, upon no
+external or material sign or proof or authority whatever. I am utterly
+indifferent to any action you may contemplate taking concerning me. Read
+your four Gospels carefully. If we do not arrive, through contemplation
+of our Lord's sojourn on this earth, of his triumph over death, of his
+message--which illuminates the meaning of our lives here--at that inner
+spiritual conversion of which he continually speaks, and which alone will
+give us charity, we are not Christians."
+
+"But the doctrines of the Church, which we were taught from childhood to
+believe? The doctrines which you once professed, and of which you have
+now made such an unlooked-for repudiation!"
+
+"Yes, I have changed," said the rector, gazing seriously at the twitching
+figure of his vestryman, "I was bound, body and soul, by those very
+doctrines." He roused himself. "But on what grounds do you declare, Mr.
+Atterbury," he demanded, somewhat sternly, "that this church is fettered
+by an ancient and dogmatic conception of Christianity? Where are you to
+find what are called the doctrines of the Church? What may be heresy in
+one diocese is not so in another, and I can refer to you volumes written
+by ministers of this Church, in good standing, whose published opinions
+are the same as those I expressed in my sermon of yesterday. The very
+cornerstone of the Church is freedom, but many have yet to discover this,
+and we have held in our Communion men of such divergent views as Dr.
+Pusey and Phillips Brooks. Mr. Newman, in his Tract Ninety, which was
+sincerely written, showed that the Thirty-nine Articles were capable of
+almost any theological interpretation. From what authoritative source
+are we to draw our doctrines? In the baptismal service the articles of
+belief are stated to be in the Apostles' Creed, but nowhere--in this
+Church is it defined how their ancient language is to be interpreted.
+That is wisely left to the individual. Shall we interpret the Gospels by
+the Creeds, which in turn purport to be interpretations of the Gospels?
+Or shall we draw our conclusions as to what the Creeds may mean to us by
+pondering on the life of Christ, and striving to do his will?
+'The letter killeth, but the Spirit maketh alive.'"
+
+Hodder rose, and stood facing his visitor squarely. He spoke slowly, and
+the fact that he made no gesture gave all the more force to his words.
+
+"Hereafter, Mr. Atterbury," he added, "so long as I am rector of this
+church, I am going to do my best to carry out the spirit of Christ's
+teaching--to make Christians. And there shall be no more compromise,
+so far as I can help it."
+
+Gordon Atterbury had grown very pale. He, too, got to his feet.
+
+"I--I cannot trust myself to discuss this matter with you any further, Mr.
+Hodder. I feel too deeply--too strongly on the subject. I do not
+pretend to account for this astonishing transformation in your opinions.
+Up to the present I have deemed St. John's fortunate--peculiarly
+fortunate, in having you for its rector. I am bound to say I think you
+have not considered, in this change of attitude on your part, those who
+have made St. John's what it is, who through long and familiar
+association are bound to it by a thousand ties,--those who, like myself,
+have what may be called a family interest in this church. My father and
+mother were married here, I was baptized here. I think I may go so far
+as to add, Mr. Hodder, that this is our church, the church which a
+certain group of people have built in which to worship God, as was their
+right. Nor do I believe we can be reproached with a lack of hospitality
+or charity. We maintain this parish house, with its clubs; and at no
+small inconvenience to ourselves we have permitted the church to remain
+in this district. There is no better church music in this city, and we
+have a beautiful service in the evening at which, all pews are free. It
+is not unreasonable that we should have something to say concerning the
+doctrine to be preached here, that we should insist that that doctrine be
+in accordance with what we have always believed was the true doctrine as
+received by this Church."
+
+Up to this point Mr. Atterbury had had a feeling that he had not carried
+out with much distinction the programme which he had so carefully
+rehearsed on the way to the parish house. Hodder's poise had amazed and
+baffled him--he had expected to find the rector on the defensive. But
+now, burning anew with a sense of injustice, he had a sense at last of
+putting his case strongly.
+
+The feeling of triumph, however, was short lived. Hodder did not reply
+at once. So many seconds, indeed, went by that Mr. Atterbury began once
+more to grow slightly nervous under the strange gaze to which he was
+subjected. And when the clergyman' spoke there was no anger in his
+voice, but a quality--a feeling which was disturbing, and difficult to
+define.
+
+"You are dealing now, Mr. Atterbury," he said, "with the things of
+Caesar, not of God. This church belongs to God--not to you. But you
+have consecrated it to him. His truth, as Christ taught it, must not be
+preached to suit any man's convenience. When you were young you were not
+taught the truth--neither was I. It was mixed with adulterations which
+obscured and almost neutralized it. But I intend to face it now, and to
+preach it, and not the comfortable compromise which gives us the illusion
+that we are Christians because we subscribe to certain tenets, and
+permits us to neglect our Christian duties.
+
+"And since you have spoken of charity, let me assure you that there is no
+such thing as charity without the transforming, personal touch. It isn't
+the bread or instruction or amusement we give people vicariously, but the
+effect of our gift--even if that gift be only a cup of cold water--in
+illuminating and changing their lives. And it will avail any church
+little to have a dozen settlement houses while her members acquiesce in
+a State which refuses to relieve her citizens from sickness and poverty.
+Charity bends down only to lift others up. And with all our works, our
+expenditure and toil, how many have we lifted up?"
+
+Gordon Atterbury's indignation got the better of him. For he was the
+last man to behold with patience the shattering of his idols.
+
+"I think you have cast an unwarranted reflection on those who have built
+and made this church what it is, Mr. Hodder," he exclaimed. "And that
+you will find there are in it many--a great many earnest Christians who
+were greatly shocked by the words you spoke yesterday, who will not
+tolerate any interference with their faith. I feel it my duty to speak
+frankly, Mr Hodder, disagreeable though it be, in view of our former
+relations. I must tell you that I am not alone in the opinion that you
+should resign. It is the least you can do, in justice to us, in justice
+to yourself. There are other bodies--I cannot call them churches--which
+doubtless would welcome your liberal, and I must add atrophying,
+interpretation of Christianity. And I trust that reflection will
+convince you of the folly of pushing this matter to the extreme. We
+should greatly deplore the sensational spectacle of St. John's being
+involved in an ecclesiastical trial, the unpleasant notoriety into which
+it would bring a church hitherto untouched by that sort of thing. And I
+ought to tell you that I, among others, am about to send an Information
+to the bishop."
+
+Gordon Atterbury hesitated a moment, but getting no reply save an
+inclination of the head, took up his hat.
+
+"Ahem--I think that is all I have to say, Mr. Hodder. Good morning."
+
+Even then Hodder did not answer, but rose and held open the door. As he
+made his exit under the strange scrutiny of the clergyman's gaze the
+little vestryman was plainly uncomfortable. He cleared his throat once
+more, halted, and then precipitately departed.
+
+Hodder went to the window and thoughtfully watched the hurrying figure
+of Mr. Atterbury until it disappeared, almost skipping, around the corner
+. . . . The germ of truth, throughout the centuries, had lost nothing
+of its dynamic potentialities. If released and proclaimed it was still
+powerful enough to drive the world to insensate anger and opposition....
+
+As he stood there, lost in reflection, a shining automobile drew up at
+the curb, and from it descended a firm lady in a tight-fitting suit whom
+he recognized as Mrs Wallis Plimpton. A moment later she had invaded the
+office--for no less a word may be employed to express her physical
+aggressiveness, the glowing health which she radiated.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Hodder," she said, seating herself in one of the
+straight-backed chairs. "I have been so troubled since you preached that
+sermon yesterday, I could scarcely sleep. And I made up my mind I'd come
+to you the first thing this morning. Mr. Plimpton and I have been
+discussing it. In fact, people are talking of nothing else. We dined
+with the Laureston Greys last night, and they, too, were full of it."
+Charlotte Plimpton looked at him, and the flow of her words suddenly
+diminished. And she added, a little lamely for her, "Spiritual matters
+in these days are so difficult, aren't they?"
+
+"Spiritual matters always were difficult, Mrs. Plimpton," he said.
+
+"I suppose so," she assented hurriedly, with what was intended for a
+smile. "But what I came to ask you is this--what are we to teach our
+children?"
+
+"Teach them the truth," the rector replied.
+
+"One of the things which troubled me most was your reference to modern
+criticism," she went on, recovering her facility. "I was brought up to
+believe that the Bible was true. The governess--Miss Standish, you know,
+such a fine type of Englishwoman--reads the children Bible stories every
+Sunday evening. They adore them, and little Wallis can repeat them
+almost by heart--the pillar of cloud by day, Daniel in the lions' den,
+and the Wise Men from the East. If they aren't true, some one ought to
+have told us before now."
+
+A note of injury had crept into her voice.
+
+"How do you feel about these things yourself?" Holder inquired.
+
+"How do I feel? Why, I have never thought about them very much--they
+were there, in the Bible!"
+
+"You were taught to believe them?"
+
+"Of course," she exclaimed, resenting what seemed a reflection on the
+Gore orthodoxy.
+
+"Do they in any manner affect your conduct?"
+
+"My conduct?" she repeated. "I don't know what you mean. I was brought
+up in the church, and Mr. Plimpton has always gone, and we are bringing
+up the children to go. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"No," Hodder answered, patiently, "that is not what I mean. I ask
+whether these stories in any way enter into your life, become part of
+you, and tend to make you a more useful woman?"
+
+"Well--I have never considered them in that way," she replied, a little
+perplexed.
+
+"Do you believe in them yourself?"
+
+"Why--I don't know,--I've never thought. I don't suppose I do,
+absolutely--not in those I have mentioned."
+
+"And you think it right to teach things to your children which you do not
+yourself believe?"
+
+"How am I to decide?" she demanded.
+
+"First by finding out yourself what you do believe," he replied, with a
+touch of severity.
+
+"Mr. Hodder!" she cried in a scandalized voice, "do you mean to say that
+I, who have been brought up in this church, do not know what Christianity
+is."
+
+He looked at her and shook his head.
+
+"You must begin by being honest with yourself," he went on, not heeding
+her shocked expression. "If you are really in earnest in this matter,
+I should be glad to help you all I can. But I warn you there is no
+achievement in the world more difficult than that of becoming a,
+Christian. It means a conversion of your whole being something which you
+cannot now even imagine. It means a consuming desire which,--I fear,--in
+consideration of your present mode of life, will be difficult to
+acquire."
+
+"My present mode of life!" she gasped.
+
+"Precisely," said the rector. He was silent, regarding, her. There was
+discernible not the slightest crack of crevice in the enamel of this
+woman's worldly armour.
+
+For the moment her outraged feelings were forgotten. The man had
+fascinated her. To be told, in this authoritative manner, that she was
+wicked was a new and delightful experience. It brought back to her the
+real motive of her visit, which had in reality been inspired not only by
+the sermon of the day before, but by sheer curiosity.
+
+"What would you have me do?" she demanded.
+
+"Find yourself."
+
+"Do you mean to say that I am not--myself?" she asked, now completely
+bewildered.
+
+"I mean to say that you are nobody until you achieve conviction."
+
+For Charlotte Plimpton, nee Gore, to be told in her own city, by the
+rector of her own church that she was nobody was an event hitherto
+inconceivable! It was perhaps as extraordinary that she did not resent.
+it. Curiosity still led her on.
+
+"Conviction?" she repeated. "But I have conviction, Mr. Hodder. I
+believe in the doctrines of the Church."
+
+"Belief!" he exclaimed, and checked himself strongly. "Conviction
+through feeling. Not until then will you find what you were put in the
+world for."
+
+"But my husband--my children? I try to do my duty."
+
+"You must get a larger conception of it," Hodder replied.
+
+"I suppose you mean," she declared, "that I am to spend the rest of my
+life in charity."
+
+"How you would spend the rest of your life would be revealed to you,"
+said the rector.
+
+It was the weariness in his tone that piqued her now, the intimation
+that he did not believe in her sincerity--had not believed in it from
+the first. The life-long vanity of a woman used to be treated with
+consideration, to be taken seriously, was aroused. This extraordinary
+man had refused to enter into the details which she inquisitively craved.
+
+Charlotte Plimpton rose.
+
+"I shall not bother you any longer at present, Mr. Hodder," she said
+sweetly. "I know you must have, this morning especially, a great deal to
+trouble you."
+
+He met her scrutiny calmly.
+
+"It is only the things we permit to trouble us that do so, Mrs.
+Plimpton," he replied. "My own troubles have arisen largely from a lack
+of faith on the part of those whom I feel it is my duty to influence."
+
+It was then she delivered her parting shot, which she repeated, with much
+satisfaction, to her husband that evening. She had reached the door.
+"Was there a special service at Calvary yesterday?" she asked innocently,
+turning back.
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"I wondered. Mr. Parr was there; I'm told--and he's never been known
+to desert St. John's except on the rarest occasions. But oh, Mr. Hodder,
+I must congratulate you on your influence with Alison. When she has been
+out here before she never used to come to church at all."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inside of the Cup, Volume 6
+by Winston Churchill
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Ebook The Inside of the Cup, v6, by Winston Churchill
+WC#24 in our series by Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: The Inside of the Cup, Volume 6.
+
+Author: Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston Churchill)
+
+Release Date: March, 2004  [EBook #5361]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 24, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
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+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSIDE OF THE CUP, V6, BY CHURCHILL ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE INSIDE OF THE CUP
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+
+Volume 6.
+
+
+XX.       THE ARRAIGNMENT
+XXI.      ALISON GOES TO CHURCH
+XXII.     WHICH SAY TO THE SEERS, SEE NOT!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE ARRAIGNMENT
+
+
+I
+
+Looking backward, Hodder perceived that he had really come to the
+momentous decision of remaining at St. John's in the twilight of an
+evening when, on returning home from seeing Kate Marcy at Mr. Bentley's
+he had entered the darkening church.  It was then that his mission had
+appeared to him as a vision.  Every day, afterward, his sense and
+knowledge of this mission had grown stronger.
+
+To his mind, not the least of the trials it was to impose upon him, and
+one which would have to be dealt with shortly, was a necessary talk with
+his assistant, McCrae.  If their relationship had from the beginning been
+unusual and unsatisfactory, adjectives would seem to defy what it had
+become during the summer.  What did McCrae think of him?  For Hodder had,
+it will be recalled, bidden his assistant good-by--and then had remained.
+At another brief interview, during which McCrae had betrayed no surprise,
+uttered no censure or comment, Hodder had announced his determination to
+remain in the city, and to take no part in the services.  An announcement
+sufficiently astounding.  During the months that followed, they had met,
+at rare intervals, exchanged casual greetings, and passed on.  And yet
+Hodder had the feeling, more firmly planted than ever, that McCrae was
+awaiting, with an interest which might be called suspense, the
+culmination of the process going on within him.
+
+Well, now that he had worked it out, now that he had reached his
+decision, it was incumbent upon him to tell his assistant what that
+decision was.  Hodder shrank from it as from an ordeal.  His affection
+for the man, his admiration for McCrae's faithful, untiring, and
+unrecognized services had deepened.  He had a theory that McCrae
+really liked him--would even sympathize with his solution; yet he
+procrastinated.  He was afraid to put his theory to the test.  It was not
+that Hodder feared that his own solution was not the right one, but that
+McCrae might not find it so: he was intensely concerned that it should
+also be McCrae's solution--the answer, if one liked, to McCrae's mute and
+eternal questionings.  He wished to have it a fruition for McCrae as well
+as for himself; since theoretically, at least, he had pierced the hard
+crust of his assistant's exterior, and conceived him beneath to be all
+suppressed fire.  In short, Hodder wished to go into battle side by side
+with McCrae.  Therein lay his anxiety.
+
+Another consideration troubled him--McCrae's family, dependent on a
+rather meagre salary.  His assistant, in sustaining him in the struggle
+he meant to enter, would be making even a greater sacrifice than himself.
+For Hodder had no illusions, and knew that the odds against him were
+incalculable.  Whatever, if defeated, his own future might be, McCrae's
+was still more problematical and tragic.
+
+The situation, when it came, was even more difficult than Hodder
+had imagined it, since McCrae was not a man to oil the wheels of
+conversation.  In silence he followed the rector up the stairs and into
+his study, in silence he took the seat at the opposite side of the table.
+And Hodder, as he hesitated over his opening, contemplated in no little
+perplexity and travail the gaunt and non-committal face before him:
+
+"McCrae," he began at length, "you must have thought my conduct this
+summer most peculiar.  I wish to thank you, first of all, for the
+consideration you have shown me, and to tell you how deeply I appreciate
+your taking the entire burden of the work of the parish."
+
+McCrae shook his head vigorously, but did not speak.
+
+"I owe it to you to give you some clew to what happened to me," the
+rector continued, "although I have an idea that you do not need much
+enlightenment on this matter.  I have a feeling that you have somehow
+been aware of my discouragement during the past year or so, and of the
+causes of it.  You yourself hold ideals concerning the Church which you
+have not confided to me.  Of this I am sure.  I came here to St. John's
+full of hope and confidence, gradually to lose both, gradually to realise
+that there was something wrong with me, that in spite of all my efforts
+I was unable to make any headway in the right direction.  I became
+perplexed, dissatisfied--the results were so meagre, so out of proportion
+to the labour.  And the very fact that those who may be called our chief
+parishioners had no complaint merely added to my uneasiness.  That kind
+of success didn't satisfy me, and I venture to assume it didn't satisfy
+you."
+
+Still McCrae made no sign.
+
+"Finally I came to what may be termed a double conclusion.  In the first
+place, I began to see more and more clearly that our modern civilization
+is at fault, to perceive how completely it is conducted on the
+materialistic theory of the survival of the fittest rather than that of
+the brotherhood of man, and that those who mainly support this church
+are, consciously or not, using it as a bulwark for the privilege they
+have gained at the expense of their fellow-citizens.  And my conclusion
+was that Christianity must contain some vital germ which I had somehow
+missed, and which I must find if I could, and preach and release it.
+That it was the release of this germ these people feared unconsciously.
+I say to you, at the risk of the accusation of conceit, that I believed
+myself to have a power in the pulpit if I could only discover the truth."
+
+Hodder thought he detected, as he spoke these words, a certain relaxation
+of the tension.
+
+"For a while, as the result of discouragement, of cowardice, I may say,
+of the tearing-down process of the theological structure--built of debris
+from many ruins on which my conception of Christianity rested, I lost all
+faith.  For many weeks I did not enter the church, as you yourself must
+know.  Then, when I had given up all hope, through certain incidents and
+certain persona, a process of reconstruction began.  In short, through no
+virtue which I can claim as my own, I believe I have arrived at the
+threshold of an understanding of Christianity as our Lord taught it and
+lived it.  And I intend to take the pulpit and begin to preach it.
+
+"I am deeply concerned in regard to yourself as to what effect my course
+may have on you.  And I am not you to listen to me with a view that you
+should see your way clear to support me McCrae, but rather that you
+should be fully apprised of my new belief and intentions.  I owe this to
+you, for your loyal support in the pest.  I shall go over with you,
+later, if you care to listen, my whole position.  It may be called the
+extreme Protestant position, and I use protestant, for want of a better
+word, to express what I believe is Paul's true as distinguished from the
+false of his two inconsistent theologies.  It was this doctrine of Paul's
+of redemption by faith, of reacting grace by an inevitable spiritual law
+--of rebirth, if you will--that Luther and the Protestant reformers
+revived and recognized, rightly, as the vital  element of Christ's
+teachings, although they did not succeed in separating it wholly from the
+dross which clung to it.  It is the leaven which has changed governments,
+and which in the end, I am firmly convinced, will make true democracy
+inevitable.  And those who oppose democracy inherently dread its
+workings.
+
+"I do not know your views, but it is only fair to add at this time that I
+no longer believe in the external and imposed authority of the Church in
+the sense in which I formerly accepted it, nor in the virgin birth, nor
+in certain other dogmas in which I once acquiesced.  Other clergymen of
+our communion have proclaimed, in speech and writing, their disbelief in
+these things.  I have satisfied my conscience as they have, and I mean to
+make no secret of my change.  I am convinced that not one man or woman
+in ten thousand to-day who has rejected Christianity ever knew what
+Christianity is.  The science and archaic philosophy in which
+Christianity has been swaddled and hampered is discredited, and the
+conclusion is drawn that Christianity itself must be discredited."
+
+"Ye're going to preach all this?" McCrae demanded, almost fiercely.
+
+"Yes," Hodder replied, still uncertain as to his assistant's attitude,
+"and more.  I have fully reflected, and I am willing to accept all the
+consequences.  I understand perfectly, McCrae, that the promulgation
+alone of the liberal orthodoxy of which I have spoken will bring me into
+conflict with the majority of the vestry and the congregation, and that
+the bishop will be appealed to.  They will say, in effect, that I have
+cheated them, that they hired one man and that another has turned up,
+whom they never would have hired.  But that won't be the whole story.
+If it were merely a question of doctrine, I should resign.  It's deeper
+than that, more sinister."  Hodder doubled up his hand, and laid it on
+the table.  "It's a matter," he said, looking into McCrae's eyes, "of
+freeing this church from those who now hold it in chains.  And the two
+questions, I see clearly now, the doctrinal and the economic, are so
+interwoven as to be inseparable.  My former, ancient presentation of
+Christianity left men and women cold.  It did not draw them into this
+church and send them out again fired with the determination to bring
+religion into everyday life, resolved to do their part in the removal of
+the injustices and cruelties with which we are surrounded, to bring
+Christianity into government, where it belongs.  Don't misunderstand me
+I'm not going to preach politics, but religion."
+
+"I don't misunderstand ye," answered McCrae.  He leaned a little forward,
+staring at the rector from behind his steel spectacles with a glance
+which had become piercing.
+
+"And I am going to discourage a charity which is a mockery of
+Christianity," Hodder went on, "the spectacle of which turns thousands
+of men and women in sickening revolt against the Church of Christ to-day.
+I have discovered, at last, how some of these persons have made their
+money, and are making it.  And I am going to let them know, since they
+have repudiated God in their own souls, since they have denied the
+Christian principle of individual responsibility, that I, as the vicar of
+God, will not be a party to the transaction of using the Church as a
+means of doling out ill-gotten gains to the poor."
+
+"Mr. Parr!" McCrae exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," said the rector, slowly, and with a touch of sadness, "since you
+have mentioned him, Mr. Parr.  But I need not say that this must go no
+farther.  I am in possession of definite facts in regard to Mr. Parr
+which I shall present to him when he returns."
+
+"Ye'll tell him to his face?"
+
+"It is the only way."
+
+McCrae had risen.  A remarkable transformation had come over the man,--
+he was reminiscent, at that moment, of some Covenanter ancestor going
+into battle.  And his voice shook with excitement.
+
+"Ye may count on me, Mr. Hodder," he cried.  "These many years I've
+waited, these many years I've seen what ye see now, but I was not the
+man.  Aye, I've watched ye, since the day ye first set foot in this
+church.  I knew what was going on inside of ye, because it was just
+that I felt myself.  I hoped--I prayed ye might come to it."
+
+The sight of this taciturn Scotchman, moved in this way, had an
+extraordinary effect on Hodder himself, and his own emotion was so
+inexpressibly stirred that he kept silence a moment to control it.
+This proof of the truth of his theory in regard to McCrae he found
+overwhelming.
+
+"But you said nothing, McCrae," he began presently.  "I felt all along
+that you knew what was wrong--if you had only spoken."
+
+"I could not," said McCrae.  "I give ye my word I tried, but I just could
+not.  Many's the time I wanted to--but I said to myself, when I looked at
+you, 'wait, it will come, much better than ye can say it.'  And ye have
+made me see more than I saw, Mr. Hodder,--already ye have.  Ye've got the
+whole thing in ye're eye, and I only had a part of it.  It's because
+ye're the bigger man of the two."
+
+"You thought I'd come to it?" demanded Hodder, as though the full force
+of this insight had just struck him.
+
+"Well," said McCrae, "I hoped.  It seemed, to look at ye, ye'r true
+nature--what was by rights inside of ye.  That's the best explaining I
+can do.  And I call to mind that time ye spoke about not making the men
+in the classes Christians--that was what started me to thinking."
+
+"And you asked me," returned the rector, "how welcome some of them would
+be in Mr. Parr's Pew."
+
+"Ah, it worried me," declared the assistant, with characteristic
+frankness, "to see how deep ye were getting in with him."
+
+Hodder did not reply to this.  He had himself risen, and stood looking at
+McCrae, filled with a new thought.
+
+"There is one thing I should like to say to you--which is very difficult,
+McCrae, but I have no doubt you see the matter as clearly as I do.  In
+making this fight, I have no one but myself to consider.  I am a single
+man--"
+
+"Yell not need to go on," answered McCrae, with an odd mixture of
+sternness and gentleness in his voice.  "I'll stand and fall with ye, Mr.
+Hodder.  Before I ever thought of the Church I learned a trade, as a boy
+in Scotland.  I'm not a bad carpenter.  And if worse comes to worse, I've
+an idea I can make as much with my hands as I make in the ministry."
+
+The smile they exchanged across the table sealed the compact between
+them.
+
+
+
+II
+
+The electric car which carried him to his appointment with the financier
+shot westward like a meteor through the night.  And now that the hour was
+actually at hand, it seemed to Hodder that he was absurdly unprepared to
+meet it.  New and formidable aspects, hitherto unthought of, rose in his
+mind, and the figure of Eldon Parr loomed to Brobdingnagian proportions
+as he approached it.  In spite of his determination, the life-blood of
+his confidence ebbed, a sense of the power and might of the man who had
+now become his adversary increased; and that apprehension of the impact
+of the great banker's personality, the cutting edge with the vast
+achievements wedged in behind it, each adding weight and impetus to its
+momentum the apprehension he had felt in less degree on the day of the
+first meeting, and which had almost immediately evaporated--surged up
+in him now.  His fear was lest the charged atmosphere of the banker's
+presence might deflect his own hitherto clear perception of true worth.
+He dreaded, once in the midst of those disturbing currents, a bungling
+presentation of the cause which inspired him, and which he knew to be
+righteousness itself.
+
+Suddenly his mood shifted, betraying still another weakness, and he saw
+Eldon Parr, suddenly, vividly--more vividly, indeed, than ever before--in
+the shades of the hell of his loneliness.  And pity welled up, drowning
+the image of incarnate greed and selfishness and lust for wealth and
+power: The unique pathos of his former relationship with the man
+reasserted itself, and Hodder was conscious once more of the dependence
+which Eldon Parr had had on his friendship.  During that friendship he,
+Hodder, had never lost the sense of being the stronger of the two, of
+being leaned upon: leaned upon by a man whom the world feared and hated,
+and whom he had been enable to regard with anything but compassion and
+the unquestionable affection which sprang from it.  Appalled by this
+transition, he alighted from the car, and stood for a moment alone in the
+darkness gazing at the great white houses that rose above the dusky
+outline of shrubbery and trees.
+
+At any rate, he wouldn't find that sense of dependence to-night.  And it
+steeled him somewhat to think, as he resumed his steps, that he would
+meet now the other side, the hard side hitherto always turned away.  Had
+he needed no other warning of this, the answer to his note asking for an
+appointment would have been enough,--a brief and formal communication
+signed by the banker's secretary.  .  .
+
+"Mr. Parr is engaged just at present, sir," said the servant who opened
+the door.  "Would you be good enough to step into the library?"
+
+Hardly had he entered the room when he heard a sound behind him, and
+turned to confront Alison.  The thought of her, too, had complicated
+infinitely his emotions concerning the interview before him, and the
+sight of her now, of her mature beauty displayed in evening dress, of her
+white throat gleaming whiter against the severe black of her gown, made
+him literally speechless.  Never had he accused her of boldness, and now
+least of all.  It was the quality of her splendid courage that was borne
+in upon him once more above the host of other feelings and impressions,
+for he read in her eyes a knowledge of the meaning of his visit.
+
+They stood facing each other an appreciable moment.
+
+"Mr. Langmaid is with him now," she said, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+Her eyes still rested on his face, questioningly, appraisingly, as though
+she were seeking to estimate his preparedness for the ordeal before him,
+his ability to go through with it successfully, triumphantly.  And in her
+mention of Langmaid he recognized that she had meant to sound a note of
+warning.  She had intimated a consultation of the captains, a council of
+war.  And yet he had never spoken to her of this visit.  This proof of
+her partisanship, that she had come to him at the crucial instant,
+overwhelmed him.
+
+"You know why I am here?" he managed to say.  It had to do with the
+extent of her knowledge.
+
+"Oh, why shouldn't I?" she cried, "after what you have told me.  And
+could you think I didn't understand, from the beginning, that it meant
+this?"
+
+His agitation still hampered him.  He made a gesture of assent.
+
+"It was inevitable," he said.
+
+"Yes, it' was inevitable," she assented, and walked slowly to the mantel,
+resting her hand on it and bending her head.  "I felt that you would not
+shirk it, and yet I realize how painful it must be to you."
+
+"And to you," he replied quickly.
+
+"Yes, and to me.  I do not know what you know, specifically,--I have
+never sought to find out things, in detail.  That would be horrid.  But
+I understand--in general--I have understood for many years."  She raised
+her head, and flashed him a glance that was between a quivering smile and
+tears.  "And I know that you have certain specific information."
+
+He could only wonder at her intuition.
+
+"So far as I am concerned, it is not for the world," he answered.
+
+"Oh, I appreciate that in you!" she exclaimed.  "I wished you to know it.
+I wished you to know," she added, a little unsteadily, "how much I admire
+you for what you are doing.  They are afraid of you--they will crush you
+if they can."
+
+He did not reply.
+
+"But you are going to speak the truth," she continued, her voice low and
+vibrating, "that is splendid!  It must have its effect, no matter what
+happens."
+
+"Do you feel that?" he asked, taking a step toward her.
+
+"Yes.  When I see you, I feel it, I think."  .  .  .
+
+Whatever answer he might have made to this was frustrated by the
+appearance of the figure of Nelson Langmaid in the doorway.  He seemed
+to survey them benevolently through his spectacles.
+
+"How are you, Hodder?  Well, Alison, I have to leave without seeing
+anything of you--you must induce your father not to bring his business
+home with him.  Just a word," he added to the rector, "before you go up."
+
+Hodder turned to Alison.  "Good night," he said.
+
+The gentle but unmistakable pressure of her hand he interpreted as the
+pinning on him of the badge of her faith.  He was to go into battle
+wearing her colours.  Their eyes met.
+
+"Good night," she answered .  .  .  .
+
+In the hall the lawyer took his arm.
+
+"What's the trouble, Hodder?"  he asked, sympathetically.
+
+Hodder, although on his guard, was somewhat taken aback by the directness
+of the onslaught.
+
+"I'm afraid, Mr. Langmaid," the rector replied, "that it would take me
+longer to tell you than the time at your disposal."
+
+Dear me," said the lawyer, "this is too bad.  Why didn't you come to me?
+I am a good friend of yours, Hodder, and there is an additional bond
+between us on my sister's account.  She is extremely fond of you, you
+know.  And I have a certain feeling of responsibility for you,--I brought
+you here."
+
+"You have always been very kind, and I appreciate it," Hodder replied.
+"I should be sorry to cause you any worry or annoyance.  But you must
+understand that I cannot share the responsibility of my acts with any
+one."
+
+"A little advice from an old legal head is sometimes not out of place.
+Even Dr. Gilman used to consult me.  I hope you will bear in mind how
+remarkably well you have been getting along at St. John's, and what a
+success you've made."
+
+"Success!" echoed the rector.
+
+Either Mr. Langmaid read nothing in his face, or was determined to read
+nothing.
+
+"Assuredly," he answered, benignly.  "You have managed to please
+everybody, Mr. Parr included,--and some of us are not easy to please.
+I thought I'd tell you this, as a friend, as your first friend in the
+parish.  Your achievement has been all the more remarkable, following,
+as you did, Dr. Gilman.  Now it would greatly distress me to see that
+state of things disturbed, both for your sake and others.  I thought I
+would just give you a hint, as you are going to see Mr. Parr, that he
+is in rather a nervous state.  These so-called political reformers have
+upset the market and started a lot of legal complications that's why I'm
+here to-night.  Go easy with him.  I know you won't do anything foolish."
+
+The lawyer accompanied this statement with a pat, but this time he did
+not succeed in concealing his concern.
+
+"That depends on one's point of view," Hodder returned, with a smile.
+"I do not know how you have come to suspect that I am going to disturb
+Mr. Parr, but what I have to say to him is between him and me."
+
+Langmaid took up his hat from the table, and sighed.
+
+"Drop in on me sometime," he said, "I'd like to talk to you--Hodder heard
+a voice behind him, and turned.  A servant was standing there.
+
+"Mr. Parr is ready to see you, sir," he said.
+
+The rector followed him up the stairs, to the room on the second floor,
+half office, half study, where the capitalist transacted his business
+when at home.
+
+
+
+III
+
+Eldon Parr was huddled over his desk reading a typewritten document; but
+he rose, and held out his hand, which Hodder took.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Hodder?  I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but
+matters of some legal importance have arisen on which I was obliged to
+make a decision.  You're well, I hope."  He shot a glance at the rector,
+and sat down again, still holding the sheets.  "If you will excuse me a
+moment longer, I'll finish this."
+
+"Certainly," Hodder replied.
+
+"Take a chair," said Mr. Parr, "you'll find the evening paper beside
+you."
+
+Hodder sat down, and the banker resumed his perusal of the document, his
+eye running rapidly over the pages, pausing once in a while to scratch
+out a word or to make a note on the margin.  In the concentration of the
+man on the task before him the rector read a design, an implication that
+the affairs of the Church were of a minor importance: sensed, indeed,
+the new attitude of hostility, gazed upon the undiscovered side, the
+dangerous side before which other men had quailed.  Alison's words
+recurred to him, "they are afraid of you, they will crush you if they
+can."  Eldon Parr betrayed, at any rate, no sign of fear.  If his mental
+posture were further analyzed, it might be made out to contain an
+intimation that the rector, by some act, had forfeited the right
+to the unique privilege of the old relationship.
+
+Well, the fact that the banker had, in some apparently occult manner,
+been warned, would make Hodder's task easier--or rather less difficult.
+His feelings were even more complicated than he had anticipated.  The
+moments of suspense were trying to his nerves, and he had a shrewd notion
+that this making men wait was a favourite manoeuvre of Eldon Parr's; nor
+had he underrated the benumbing force of that personality.  It was
+evident that the financier intended him to open the battle, and he was--
+as he had expected--finding it difficult to marshal the regiments of his
+arguments.  In vain he thought of the tragedy of Garvin .  .  .  .  The
+thing was more complicated.  And behind this redoubtable and sinister
+Eldon Parr he saw, as it were, the wraith of that: other who had once
+confessed the misery of his loneliness. . . .
+
+At last the banker rang, sharply, the bell on his desk.  A secretary
+entered, to whom he dictated a telegram which contained these words:
+"Langmaid has discovered a way out."  It was to be sent to an address in
+Texas.  Then he turned in his chair and crossed his knees, his hand
+fondling an ivory paper-cutter.  He smiled a little.
+
+"Well, Mr. Hodder," he said.
+
+The rector, intensely on his guard, merely inclined his head in
+recognition that his turn had come.
+
+"I was sorry," the banker continued, after a perceptible pause, --that
+you could not see your way clear to have come with me on the cruise."
+
+"I must thank you again," Hodder answered, "but I felt--as I wrote you--
+that certain matters made it impossible for me to go."
+
+"I suppose you had your reasons, but I think you would have enjoyed the
+trip.  I had a good, seaworthy boat--I chartered her from Mr. Lieber, the
+president of the Continental Zinc, you know.  I went as far as Labrador.
+A wonderful coast, Mr. Hodder."
+
+"It must be," agreed the rector.  It was clear that Mr. Parr intended to
+throw upon him the onus of the first move.  There was a silence, brief,
+indeed, but long enough for Hodder to feel more and more distinctly the
+granite hardness which the other had become, to experience a rising,
+reenforcing anger.  He went forward, steadily but resolutely, on the
+crest of it.  "I have remained in the city," he continued, "and I have had
+the opportunity to discover certain facts of which I have hitherto been
+ignorant, and which, in my opinion, profoundly affect the welfare of the
+church.  It is of these I wished to speak to you."
+
+Mr. Parr waited.
+
+"It is not much of an exaggeration to say that ever since I came here
+I have been aware that St. John's, considering the long standing of the
+parish, the situation of the church in a thickly populated district, is
+not fulfilling its mission.  But I have failed until now to perceive the
+causes of that inefficiency."
+
+"Inefficiency?"  The banker repeated the word.
+
+"Inefficiency," said Hodder.  "The reproach, the responsibility is
+largely mine, as the rector, the spiritual, head of the parish.  I
+believe I am right when I say that the reason for the decision, some
+twenty years ago, to leave the church where it is, instead of selling the
+property and building in the West End, was that it might minister to the
+poor in the neighbourhood, to bring religion and hope into their lives,
+and to exert its influence towards eradicating the vice and misery which
+surround it."
+
+"But I thought you had agreed," said Mr. Parr, coldly, "that we were to
+provide for that in the new chapel and settlement house."
+
+"For reasons which I hope to make plain to you, Mr. Parr," Hodder
+replied, "those people can never be reached, as they ought to be reached,
+by building that settlement house.  The principle is wrong, the day is
+past when such things can be done--in that way."  He laid an emphasis on
+these words.  "It is good, I grant you, to care for the babies and
+children of the poor, it is good to get young women and men out of the
+dance-halls, to provide innocent amusement, distraction, instruction.
+But it is not enough.  It leaves the great, transforming thing in the
+lives of these people untouched, and it will forever remain untouched so
+long as a sense of wrong, a continually deepening impression of an
+unchristian civilization upheld by the Church herself, exists.  Such an
+undertaking as that settlement house--I see clearly now--is a palliation,
+a poultice applied to one of many sores, a compromise unworthy of the
+high mission of the Church.  She should go to the root of the disease.
+It is her first business to make Christians, who, by amending their own
+lives, by going out individually and collectively into the life of the
+nation, will gradually remove these conditions."
+
+Mr. Parr sat drumming on the table.  Hodder met his look.
+
+"So you, too, have come to it," he said.
+
+"Have come to what?"
+
+"Socialism."
+
+Hodder, in the state of clairvoyance in which he now surprisingly found
+himself, accurately summed up the value and meaning of the banker's sigh.
+
+"Say, rather," he replied, "that I have come to Christianity.  We shall
+never have what is called socialism until there is no longer any
+necessity for it, until men, of their owe free will, are ready to
+renounce selfish, personal ambition and power and work for humanity,
+for the state."
+
+Mr. Parr's gesture implied that he cared not by what name the thing was
+called, but he still appeared strangely, astonishingly calm;--Hodder,
+with all his faculties acute, apprehended that he was dangerously calm.
+The man who had formerly been his friend was now completely obliterated,
+and he had the feeling almost of being about to grapple, in mortal
+combat, with some unknown monster whose tactics and resources were
+infinite, whose victims had never escaped.  The monster was in Eldon
+Parr--that is how it came to him.  The waxy, relentless demon was
+aroused.  It behooved him, Hodder, to step carefully .  .  .  .
+
+"That is all very fine, Mr. Hodder, very altruistic, very Christian,
+I've no doubt-but the world doesn't work that way."  (These were the
+words borne in on Hodder's consciousness.) "What drives the world is the
+motive furnished by the right of acquiring and holding property.  If we
+had a division to-day, the able men would come out on top next year."
+
+The rector shook his head.  He remembered, at that moment, Horace
+Bentley.
+
+"What drives the world is a far higher motive, Mr. Parr, the motive
+with which have been fired the great lights of history, the motive of
+renunciation and service which is transforming governments, which is
+gradually making the world a better place in which to live.  And we are
+seeing men and women imbued with it, rising in ever increasing numbers on
+every side to-day."
+
+"Service!" Eldon Parr had seized upon the word as it passed and held it.
+"What do you think my life has been?  I suppose," he said, with a touch
+of intense bitterness, "that you, too, who six months ago seemed as
+reasonable a man as I ever met, have joined in the chorus of
+denunciators.  It has become the fashion to-day, thanks to your
+socialists, reformers, and agitators, to decry a man because he is rich,
+to take it for granted that he is a thief and a scoundrel, that he has no
+sense of responsibility for his country and his fellow-men.  The glory,
+the true democracy of this nation, lies in its equal opportunity for all.
+They take no account of that, of the fact that each has had the same
+chance as his fellows.  No, but they cry out that the man who, by the
+sweat of his brow, has earned wealth ought to divide it up with the lazy
+and the self-indulgent and the shiftless.
+
+"Take my case, for instance,--it is typical of thousands.  I came to this
+city as a boy in my teens, with eight dollars in my pocket which I had
+earned on a farm.  I swept the floor, cleaned the steps, moved boxes and
+ran errands in Gabriel Parker's store on Third Street.  I was
+industrious, sober, willing to do anything.  I fought, I tell you every
+inch of my way.  As soon as I saved a little money I learned to use every
+ounce of brain I possessed to hold on to it.  I trusted a man once, and I
+had to begin all over again.  And I discovered, once for all, if a man
+doesn't look out for himself, no one will.
+
+"I don't pretend that I am any better than any one else, I have had to
+take life as I found it, and make the best of it.  I conformed to the
+rules of the game; I soon had sense enough knocked into me to understand
+that the conditions were not of my making.  But I'll say this for
+myself," Eldon Parr leaned forward over the blotter, "I had standards,
+and I stuck by them.  I wanted to be a decent citizen, to bring up my
+children in the right way.  I didn't squander my money, when I got it, on
+wine and women, I respected other men's wives, I supported the Church and
+the institutions of the city.  I too even I had my ambitions, my ideals--
+and they were not entirely worldly ones.  You would probably accuse me of
+wishing to acquire only the position of power which I hold.  If you had
+accepted my invitation to go aboard the yacht this summer, it was my
+intention to unfold to you a scheme of charities which has long been
+forming in my mind, and which I think would be of no small benefit to the
+city where I have made my fortune.  I merely mention this to prove to you
+that I am not unmindful, in spite of the circumstances of my own life,
+of the unfortunates whose mental equipment is not equal to my own."
+
+By this "poor boy" argument which--if Hodder had known--Mr. Parr had
+used at banquets with telling effect, the banker seemed to regain
+perspective and equilibrium, to plant his feet once more on the
+rock of the justification of his life, and from which, by a somewhat
+extraordinary process he had not quite understood, he had been partially
+shaken off.  As he had proceeded with his personal history, his manner
+had gradually become one of the finality of experience over theory,
+of the forbearance of the practical man with the visionary.  Like most
+successful citizens of his type, he possessed in a high degree the
+faculty of creating sympathy, of compelling others to accept--
+temporarily, at least--his point of view.  It was this faculty, Hodder
+perceived, which had heretofore laid an enchantment upon him, and it was
+not without a certain wonder that he now felt himself to be released from
+the spell.
+
+The perceptions of the banker were as keen, and his sense of security was
+brief.  Somehow, as he met the searching eye of the rector, he was unable
+to see the man as a visionary, but beheld--and, to do him justice--felt a
+twinge of respect for an adversary worthy of his steel.
+
+He, who was accustomed to prepare for clouds when they were mere specks
+on his horizon, paused even now to marvel why he had not dealt with this.
+Here was a man--a fanatic, if he liked--but still a man who positively
+did not fear him, to whom his wrath and power were as nothing!  A new and
+startling and complicated sensation--but Eldon Parr was no coward.  If he
+had, consciously or unconsciously, formerly looked upon the clergyman as
+a dependent, Hodder appeared to be one no more.  The very ruggedness of
+the man had enhanced, expanded--as it were--until it filled the room.
+And Hodder had, with an audacity unparalleled in the banker's experience
+arraigned by implication his whole life, managed to put him on the
+defensive.
+
+"But if that be your experience," the rector said, "and it has become
+your philosophy, what is it in you that impels you to give these large
+sums for the public good?"
+
+"I should suppose that you, as a clergyman, might understand that my
+motive is a Christian one."
+
+Hodder sat very still, but a higher light came into his eyes.
+
+"Mr. Parr," he replied, "I have been a friend of yours, and I am a friend
+still.  And what I am going to tell you is not only in the hope that
+others may benefit, but that your own soul may be saved.  I mean that
+literally--your own soul.  You are under the impression that you are a
+Christian, but you are not and never have been one.  And you will not be
+one until your whole life is transformed, until you become a different
+man.  If you do not change, it is my duty to warn you that the sorrow and
+suffering, the uneasiness which you now know, and which drive you on, in
+search of distraction, to adding useless sums of money to your fortune--
+this suffering, I say, will become intensified.  You will die in the
+knowledge of it, and live on after, in the knowledge of it."
+
+In spite of himself, the financier drew back before this unexpected
+blast, the very intensity of which had struck a chill of terror in his
+inmost being.  He had been taken off his guard,--for he had supposed the
+day long past--if it had ever existed--when a spiritual rebuke would
+upset him; the day long past when a minister could pronounce one with
+any force.  That the Church should ever again presume to take herself
+seriously had never occurred to him.  And yet--the man had denounced him
+in a moment of depression, of nervous irritation and exasperation against
+a government which had begun to interfere with the sacred liberty of its
+citizens, against political agitators who had spurred that government on.
+The world was mad.  No element, it seemed, was now content to remain in
+its proper place.  His voice, as he answered, shook with rage,--all the
+greater because the undaunted sternness by which it was confronted seemed
+to reduce it to futility.
+
+"Take care!" he cried, "take care! You, nor any other man, clergyman or
+no clergyman, have any right to be the judge of my conduct."
+
+"On the contrary," said Holder, "if your conduct affects the welfare, the
+progress, the reputation of the church of which I am rector, I have the
+right.  And I intend to exercise it.  It becomes my duty, however
+painful, to tell you, as a member of the Church, wherein you have
+wronged the Church and wronged yourself."
+
+He didn't raise his tone, and there was in it more of sorrow than of
+indignation.  The banker turned an ashen gray .  .  A moment elapsed
+before he spoke, a transforming moment.  He suddenly became ice.
+
+"Very well," he said.  "I can't pretend to account for these astounding
+views you have acquired--and I am using a mild term.  Let me say this:
+(he leaned forward a little, across the desk) I demand that you be
+specific.  I am a busy man, I have little time to waste, I have certain
+matters--before me which must be attended to to-night.  I warn you that
+I will not listen any longer to vague accusations."
+
+It was Holder's turn to marvel.  Did Eldon Purr, after all; have no sense
+of guilt?  Instantaneously, automatically, his own anger rose.
+
+"You may be sure, Mr. Parr, that I should not be here unless I were
+prepared to be specific.  And what I am going to say to you I have
+reserved for your ear alone, in the hope that you will take it to heart,
+while it is not yet too late, said amend your life accordingly."
+
+Eldon Parr shifted slightly.  His look became inscrutable, was riveted on
+the rector.
+
+"I shall call your attention first to a man of whom you have probably
+never heard.  He is dead now--he threw himself into the river this
+summer, with a curse on his lips--I am afraid--a curse against you.  A
+few years ago he lived happily with his wife and child in a little house
+on the Grade Suburban, and he had several thousand dollars as a result of
+careful saving and systematic self-denial.
+
+"Perhaps you have never thought of the responsibilities of a great name.
+This man, like thousands of others in the city, idealized you.  He looked
+up to you as the soul of honour, as a self-made man who by his own
+unaided efforts--as you yourself have just pointed out--rose from a poor
+boy to a position of power and trust in the community.  He saw you a
+prominent layman in the Church of God.  He was dazzled by the brilliancy
+of your success, inspired by a civilization which--gave such
+opportunities.  He recognized that he himself had not the brains for such
+an achievement,--his hope and love and ambition were centred in his boy."
+
+At the word Eldon Parr's glance was suddenly dulled by pain.  He
+tightened his lips.
+
+"That boy was then of a happy, merry disposition, so the mother says, and
+every summer night as she cooked supper she used to hear him laughing as
+he romped in the yard with his father.  When I first saw him this summer,
+it was two days before his father committed suicide.  The child was
+lying, stifled with the heat, in the back room of one of those desolate
+lodging houses in Dalton Street, and his little body had almost wasted
+away.
+
+"While I was there the father came in, and when he saw me he was filled
+with fury.  He despised the Church, and St. John's above all churches,
+because you were of it; because you who had given so generously to it had
+wrecked his life.  You had shattered his faith in humanity, his ideal.
+From a normal, contented man he had deteriorated into a monomaniac whom
+no one would hire, a physical and mental wreck who needed care and
+nursing.  He said he hoped the boy would die.
+
+"And what had happened?  The man had bought, with all the money he had
+in the world, Consolidated Tractions.  He had bought it solely because
+of his admiration for your ability, his faith in your name.  It was
+inconceivable to him that a man of your standing, a public benefactor, a
+supporter of church and charities, would permit your name to be connected
+with any enterprise that was not sound and just.  Thousands like Garvin
+lost all they had, while you are still a rich man.  It is further
+asserted that you sold out all your stock at a high price, with the
+exception of that in the leased lines, which are guaranteed heavy
+dividends."
+
+"Have you finished?"  demanded Eldon Parr.
+
+"Not quite, on this subject," replied the rector.  "Two nights after
+that, the man threw himself in the river.  His body was pulled out by men
+on a tugboat, and his worthless stock certificate was in his pocket.  It
+is now in the possession of Mr. Horace Bentley.  Thanks to Mr. Bentley,
+the widow found a temporary home, and the child has almost recovered."
+
+Hodder paused.  His interest had suddenly become concentrated upon the
+banker's new demeanour, and he would not have thought it within the range
+of possibility that a man could listen to such a revelation concerning
+himself without the betrayal of some feeling.  But so it was,--Eldon Parr
+had been coldly attentive, save for the one scarcely perceptible tremor
+when the boy was mentioned.  His interrogatory gesture gave the very
+touch of perfection to this attitude, since it proclaimed him to have
+listened patiently to a charge so preposterous that a less reasonable man
+would have cut it short.
+
+"And what leads you to suppose," he inquired, "that I am responsible in
+this matter?  What leads you to infer that the Consolidated Tractions
+Company was not organized in good faith?  Do you think that business men
+are always infallible?  The street-car lines of this city were at sixes
+and sevens, fighting each other; money was being wasted by poor
+management.  The idea behind the company was a public-spirited one, to
+give the citizens cheaper and better service, by a more modern equipment,
+by a wider system of transfer.  It seems to me, Mr. Hodder, that you put
+yourself in a more quixotic position than the so-called reformers when
+you assume that the men who organize a company in good faith are
+personally responsible for every share of stock that is sold, and for
+the welfare of every individual who may buy the stock.  We force no one
+to buy it.  They do so at their own risk.  I myself have thousands of
+dollars of worthless stock in my safe.  I have never complained."
+
+The full force of Hodder's indignation went into his reply.
+
+"I am not talking about the imperfect code of human justice under which
+we live, Mr. Parr," he cried.  "This is not a case in which a court of
+law may exonerate you, it is between you and your God.  But I have taken
+the trouble to find out, from unquestioned sources, the truth about the
+Consolidated Tractions Company--I shall not go into the details at
+length--they are doubtless familiar to you.  I know that the legal genius
+of Mr. Langmaid, one of my vestry, made possible the organization of the
+company, and thereby evaded the plain spirit of the law of the state.
+I know that one branch line was bought for two hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars, and capitalized for three millions, and that most of the others
+were scandalously over-capitalized.  I know that while the coming
+transaction was still a secret, you and other, gentlemen connected with
+the matter bought up large interests in other lines, which you proceeded
+to lease to yourselves at guaranteed dividends which these lines do not
+earn.  I know that the first large dividend was paid out of capital.  And
+the stock which you sold to poor Garvin was so hopelessly watered that it
+never could have been anything but worthless.  If, in spite of these
+facts, you do not deem yourself responsible for the misery which has been
+caused, if your conscience is now clear, it is my duty to tell you that
+there is a higher bar of justice."
+
+The intensity of the fire of the denunciation had, indeed, a momentary
+yet visible effect in the banker's expression.  Whatever the emotions
+thus lashed to self-betrayal, anger, hatred,--fear, perhaps, Hodder could
+not detect a trace of penitence; and he was aware, on the part of the
+other, of a supreme, almost spasmodic effort for self-control.  The
+constitutional reluctance of Eldon Parr to fight openly could not have
+been more clearly demonstrated.
+
+"Because you are a clergyman, Mr. Hodder," he began, "because you are
+the rector of St. John's, I have allowed you to say things to me which
+I would not have permitted from any other man.  I have tried to take
+into account your point of view, which is naturally restricted, your
+pardonable ignorance of what business men, who wish to do their duty by
+Church and State, have to contend with.  When you came to this parish you
+seemed to have a sensible, a proportional view of things; you were
+content to confine your activities to your own sphere, content not to
+meddle with politics and business, which you could, at first hand, know
+nothing about.  The modern desire of clergymen to interfere in these
+matters has ruined the usefulness of many of them.
+
+"I repeat, I have tried to be patient.  I venture to hope, still, that
+this extraordinary change in you may not be permanent, but merely the
+result of a natural sympathy with the weak and unwise and unfortunate who
+are always to be found in a complex civilization.  I can even conceive
+how such a discovery must have shocked you, temporarily aroused your
+indignation, as a clergyman, against the world as it is--and, I may add,
+as it has always been.  My personal friendship for you, and my interest
+in your future welfare impel me to make a final appeal to you not to ruin
+a career which is full of promise."
+
+The rector did not take advantage of the pause.  A purely psychological
+curiosity hypnotized him to see how far the banker would go in his
+apparent generosity.
+
+"I once heard you say, I believe, in a sermon, that the Christian
+religion is a leaven.  It is the leaven that softens and ameliorates the
+hard conditions of life, that makes our relations with our fellow-men
+bearable.  But life is a contest, it is war.  It always has been, and
+always will be.  Business is war, commerce is war, both among nations and
+individuals.  You cannot get around it.  If a man does not exterminate
+his rivals they will exterminate him.  In other days churches were built
+and endowed with the spoils of war, and did not disdain the money.
+To-day they cheerfully accept the support and gifts of business men.
+I do not accuse them of hypocrisy.  It is a recognition on their part
+that business men, in spite of hard facts, are not unmindful of the
+spiritual side of life, and are not deaf to the injunction to help
+others.  And when, let me ask you, could you find in the world's history
+more splendid charities than are around us to-day?  Institutions endowed
+for medical research, for the conquest of deadly diseases? libraries,
+hospitals, schools--men giving their fortunes for these things, the
+fruits of a life's work so laboriously acquired?  Who can say that the
+modern capitalist is not liberal, is not a public benefactor?
+
+"I dislike being personal, but you have forced it upon me.  I dislike to
+refer to what I have already done in the matter of charities, but I
+hinted to you awhile ago of a project I have conceived and almost
+perfected of gifts on a much larger scale than I have ever attempted."
+The financier stared at him meaningly.  "And I had you in mind as one of
+the three men whom I should consult, whom I should associate with myself
+in the matter.  We cannot change human nature, but we can better
+conditions by wise giving.  I do not refer now to the settle ment house,
+which I am ready to help make and maintain as the best in the country,
+but I have in mind a system to be carried out with the consent and aid
+of the municipal government, of play-grounds, baths, parks, places of
+recreation, and hospitals, for the benefit of the people, which will
+put our city in the very forefront of progress.  And I believe, as a
+practical man, I can convince you that the betterment which you and I so
+earnestly desire can be brought about in no other way.  Agitation can
+only result in anarchy and misery for all."
+
+Hodder's wrath, as he rose from his chair, was of the sort that appears
+incredibly to add to the physical stature,--the bewildering spiritual
+wrath which is rare indeed, and carries all before it.
+
+"Don't tempt me, Mr. Parr!" he said.  "Now that I know the truth, I tell
+you frankly I would face poverty and persecution rather than consent to
+your offer.  And I warn you once more not to flatter yourself that
+existence ends here, that you will, not be called to answer for every
+wrong act you have committed in accumulating your fortune, that what
+you call business is an affair of which God takes no account.  What
+I say may seem foolishness to you, but I tell you, in the words of that
+Foolishness, that it will not profit you to gain the whole world and lose
+your own soul.  You remind me that the Church in old time accepted gifts
+from the spoils of war, and I will add of rapine and murder.  And the
+Church to-day, to repeat your own parallel, grows rich with money
+wrongfully got.  Legally?  Ah, yes, legally, perhaps.  But that will not
+avail you.  And the kind of church you speak of--to which I, to my shame,
+once consented--Our Lord repudiates.  It is none of his.  I warn you, Mr.
+Parr, in his Name, first to make your peace with your brothers before you
+presume to lay another gift on the altar."
+
+During this withering condemnation of himself Eldon Parr sat motionless,
+his face grown livid, an expression on it that continued to haunt Hodder
+long afterwards.  An expression, indeed, which made the banker almost
+unrecognizable.
+
+"Go, he whispered, his hand trembling visibly as he pointed towards the
+door.  "Go--I have had enough of this."
+
+"Not until I have said one thing more," replied the rector, undaunted.
+"I have found the woman whose marriage with your son you prevented, whom
+you bought off and started on the road to hell without any sense of
+responsibility.  You have made of her a prostitute and a drunkard.
+Whether she can be rescued or not is problematical.  She, too, is in
+Mr. Bentley's care, a man upon whom you once showed no mercy.  I leave
+Garvin, who has gone to his death, and Kate Marcy and Horace Bentley to
+your conscience, Mr. Parr.  That they are representative of many others,
+I do not doubt.  I tell you solemnly that the whole meaning of life is
+service to others, and I warn you, before it is too late, to repent and
+make amends.  Gifts will not help you, and charities are of no avail."
+
+At the reference to Kate Marcy Eldon Parr's hand dropped to his side.
+He seemed to have physical difficulty in speaking.
+
+"Ah, you have found that woman!" He leaned an elbow on the desk,
+he seemed suddenly to have become weary, spent, old.  And Hodder,
+as he watched him, perceived--that his haggard look was directed towards
+a photograph in a silver frame on the table--a photograph of Preston
+Parr.  At length he broke the silence.
+
+"What would you have had me do?"  he asked.  "Permit my son to marry a
+woman of the streets, I suppose.  That would have been Christianity,
+according to your notion.  Come now, what world you have done, if your
+son had been in question?"
+
+A wave of pity swept over the rector.
+
+"Why," he said, why did you have nothing but cruelty in your heart, and
+contempt for her?  When you saw that she was willing, for the love of the
+son whom you loved, to give up all that life meant to her, how could you
+destroy her without a qualm?  The crime you committed was that you
+refused to see God in that woman's soul, when he had revealed himself to
+you.  You looked for wile, for cunning, for self-seeking,--and they were
+not there.  Love had obliterated them.  When you saw how meekly she
+obeyed you, and agreed to go away, why did you not have pity?  If you
+had listened to your conscience, you would have known what to do.
+
+"I do not say that you should not have opposed the marriage--then.
+Marriage is not to be lightly entered into.  From the moment you went to
+see her you became responsible for her.  You hurled her into the abyss,
+and she has come back to haunt you.  You should have had her educated and
+cared for--she would have submitted, to any plan you proposed.  And if,
+after a sensible separation, you became satisfied as to her character and
+development, and your son still wished to marry her, you should have
+withdrawn your objections.
+
+"As it is, and in consequence of your act, you have lost your son.  He
+left you then, and you have no more control over him."
+
+"Stop!" cried Eldon Parr, "for God's sake stop!  I won't stand any more
+of this.  I will not listen to criticism of my life, to strictures on my
+conduct from you or any other man."  He reached for a book on the corner
+of his desk--a cheque book.--"You'll want money for these people, I
+suppose," he added brutally.  "I will give it, but it must be understood
+that I do not recognize any right of theirs to demand it."
+
+For a moment Holder did not trust himself to reply.  He looked down
+across the desk at the financier, who was fumbling with the leaves.
+
+"They do not demand it, Mr. Parr," he answered, gently.  "And I have
+tried to make it plain to you that you have lost the right to give it.
+I expected to fail in this.  I have failed."
+
+"What do you mean?"  Eldon Parr let the cheque book close.
+
+"I mean what I said," the rector replied.  "That if you would save your
+soul you must put an end, to-morrow, to the acquisition of money, and
+devote the rest of your life to an earnest and sincere attempt to make
+just restitution to those you have wronged.  And you must ask the
+forgiveness of God for your sins.  Until you do that, your charities are
+abominations in his sight.  I will not trouble you any longer, except to
+say that I shall be ready to come to you at any time my presence may be
+of any help to you."
+
+The banker did not speak .  .  .  .  With a single glance towards the
+library Holder left the house, but paused for a moment outside to gaze
+back at it, as it loomed in the darkness against the stars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ALISON GOES TO CHURCH
+
+
+I
+
+On the following Sunday morning the early light filtered into Alison's
+room, and she opened her strong eyes.  Presently she sprang from her bed
+and drew back the curtains of the windows, gazing rapturously into the
+crystal day.  The verdure of the Park was freshened to an incredible
+brilliancy by the dew, a thin white veil of mist was spread over the
+mirror of the waters, the trees flung long shadows across the turf.
+
+A few minutes later she was out, thrilled by the silence, drawing in
+deep, breaths of the morning air; lingering by still lakes catching the
+blue of the sky--a blue that left its stain upon the soul; as the sun
+mounted she wandered farther, losing herself in the wilderness of the
+forest.
+
+At eight o'clock, when she returned, there were signs that the city had
+awakened.  A mounted policeman trotted past her as she crossed a gravel
+drive, and on the tree-flecked stretches, which lately had been empty as
+Eden, human figures were scattered.  A child, with a sailboat that
+languished for lack of wind, stared at her, first with fascination and
+wonder in his eyes, and then smiled at her tentatively.  She returned the
+smile with a start.
+
+Children had stared at her like that before now, and for the first time
+in her life she asked herself what the look might mean.  She had never
+really been fond of them: she had never, indeed, been brought much in
+contact with them.  But now, without warning, a sudden fierce yearning
+took possession of her: surprised and almost frightened, she stopped
+irresistibly and looked back at the thin little figure crouched beside
+the water, to discover that his widened eyes were still upon her.  Her
+own lingered on him shyly, and thus for a moment she hung in doubt
+whether to flee or stay, her heart throbbing as though she were on the
+brink of some unknown and momentous adventure.  She took a timid step.
+
+"What's your name?" she asked.
+
+The boy told her.
+
+"What's yours?" he ventured, still under the charm.
+
+"Alison."
+
+He had never heard of that name, and said so.  They deplored the lack of
+wind.  And presently, still mystified, but gathering courage, he asked
+her why she blushed, at which her colour deepened.
+
+"I can't help it," she told him.
+
+"I like it," the boy said.
+
+Though the grass was still wet, she got down on her knees in her white
+skirt, the better to push the boat along the shore: once it drifted
+beyond their reach, and was only rescued by a fallen branch discovered
+with difficulty.
+
+The arrival of the boy's father, an anaemic-looking little man, put an
+end to their play.  He deplored the condition of the lady's dress.
+
+"It doesn't matter in the least," she assured him, and fled in a mood she
+did not attempt to analyze.  Hurrying homeward, she regained her room,
+bathed, and at half past eight appeared in the big, formal dining-room,
+from which the glare of the morning light was carefully screened.  Her
+father insisted on breakfasting here; and she found him now seated before
+the white table-cloth, reading a newspaper.  He glanced up at her
+critically.
+
+"So you've decided to honour me this morning," he said.
+
+"I've been out in the Park," she replied, taking the chair opposite him.
+He resumed his reading, but presently, as she was pouring out the coffee,
+he lowered the paper again.
+
+"What's the occasion to-day?" he asked.
+
+"The occasion?"  she repeated, without acknowledging that she had
+instantly grasped his implication.  His eyes were on her gown.
+
+"You are not accustomed, as a rule, to pay much deference to Sunday."
+
+"Doesn't the Bible say, somewhere," she inquired, "that the Sabbath was
+made for man?  Perhaps that may be broadened after a while, to include
+woman."
+
+"But you have never been an advocate, so far as I know, of women taking
+advantage of their opportunity by going to Church."
+
+"What's the use," demanded Alison, "of the thousands of working women
+spending the best part of the day in the ordinary church, when their feet
+and hands and heads are aching?  Unless some fire is kindled in their
+souls, it is hopeless for them to try to obtain any benefit from
+religion--so-called--as it is preached to them in most churches."
+
+"Fire in their souls!" exclaimed the banker.
+
+"Yes.  If the churches offered those who might be leaders among their
+fellows a practical solution of existence, kindled their self-respect,
+replaced a life of drudgery by one of inspiration--that would be worth
+while.  But you will never get such a condition as that unless your
+pulpits are filled by personalities, instead of puppets who are all cast
+in one mould, and who profess to be there by divine right."
+
+"I am glad to see at least that you are taking an interest in religious
+matters," her father observed, meaningly.
+
+Alison coloured.  But she retorted with spirit.
+
+"That is true of a great many persons to-day who are thinking on the
+subject.  If Christianity is a solution of life, people are demanding of
+the churches that they shall perform their function, and show us how, and
+why, or else cease to encumber the world."
+
+Eldon Parr folded up his newspaper.
+
+"So you are going to Church this morning," he said.
+
+"Yes.  At what time will you be ready?"
+
+"At quarter to eleven.  But if you are going to St. John', you will have
+to start earlier.  I'll order a car at half past ten."
+
+"Where are you going?" She held her breath, unconsciously, for the
+answer.
+
+"To Calvary," he replied coldly, as he rose to leave the room.  "But I
+hesitate to ask you to come,--I am afraid you will not find a religion
+there that suits you."
+
+For a moment she could not trust herself to speak.  The secret which,
+ever since Friday evening, she had been burning to learn was disclosed
+.  .  .  Her father had broken with Mr. Hodder!
+
+"Please don't order the motor for me," she said.  "I'd rather go in the
+street cars."
+
+She sat very still in the empty room, her face burning.
+
+Characteristically, her father had not once mentioned the rector of St.
+John's, yet had contrived to imply that her interest in Hodder was
+greater than her interest in religion.  And she was forced to admit, with
+her customary honesty, that the implication was true.
+
+
+The numbers who knew Alison Parr casually thought her cold.  They admired
+a certain quality in her work, but they did not suspect that that quality
+was the incomplete expression of an innate idealism capable of being
+fanned into flame,--for she was subject to rare but ardent enthusiasms
+which kindled and transformed her incredibly in the eyes of the few to
+whom the process had been revealed.  She had had even a longer list of
+suitors than any one guessed; men who--usually by accident--had touched
+the hidden spring, and suddenly beholding an unimagined woman, had
+consequently lost their heads.  The mistake most of them had made (for
+subtlety in such affairs is not a masculine trait) was the failure to
+recognize and continue to present the quality in them which had awakened
+her.  She had invariably discovered the feet of clay.
+
+Thus disillusion had been her misfortune--perhaps it would be more
+accurate to say her fortune.  She had built up, after each invasion, her
+defences more carefully and solidly than before, only to be again
+astonished and dismayed by the next onslaught, until at length the
+question had become insistent--the question of an alliance for purposes
+of greater security.  She had returned to her childhood home to consider
+it, frankly recognizing it as a compromise, a fall .  .  .  .
+
+And here, in this sanctuary of her reflection, and out of a quarter on
+which she had set no watch, out of a wilderness which she had believed to
+hold nothing save the ruined splendours of the past, had come one who,
+like the traditional figures of the wilderness, had attracted her by his
+very uncouthness and latent power.  And the anomaly he presented in what
+might be called the vehemence of his advocacy of an outworn orthodoxy,
+in his occupation of the pulpit of St. John's, had quickened at once her
+curiosity and antagonism.  It had been her sudden discovery, or rather
+her instinctive suspicion of the inner conflict in him which had set her
+standard fluttering in response.  Once more (for the last time--something
+whispered--now) she had become the lady of the lists; she sat on her
+walls watching, with beating heart and straining eyes, the closed helm
+of her champion, ready to fling down the revived remnant of her faith as
+prize or forfeit.  She had staked all on the hope that he would not lower
+his lance. . . . .
+
+Saturday had passed in suspense .  .  .  .  And now was flooding in on
+her the certainty that he had not failed her; that he had, with a sublime
+indifference to a worldly future and success, defied the powers.  With
+indifference, too, to her!  She knew, of course, that he loved her.
+A man with less of greatness would have sought a middle way .  .  .  .
+
+When, at half past ten, she fared forth into the sunlight, she was filled
+with anticipation, excitement, concern, feelings enhanced and not soothed
+by the pulsing vibrations of the church bells in the softening air.  The
+swift motion of the electric car was grateful.  .  .  But at length the
+sight of familiar landmarks, old-fashioned dwellings crowded in between
+the stores and factories of lower Tower Street, brought back
+recollections of the days when she had come this way, other Sunday
+mornings, and in a more leisurely public vehicle, with her mother.
+Was it possible that she, Alison Parr, were going to church now?  Her
+excitement deepened, and she found it difficult to bring herself to the
+realization that her destination was a church--the church of her
+childhood.  At this moment she could only think of St. John's as the
+setting of the supreme drama.
+
+When she alighted at the corner of Burton Street there was the well-
+remembered, shifting group on the pavement in front of the church porch.
+How many times, in the summer and winter, in fair weather and cloudy, in
+rain and sleet and snow had she approached that group, as she approached
+it now!  Here were the people, still, in the midst of whom her earliest
+associations had been formed, changed, indeed,-but yet the same.  No, the
+change was in her, and the very vastness of that change came as a shock.
+These had stood still, anchored to their traditions, while she--had she
+grown? or merely wandered?  She had searched, at least, and seen.  She
+had once accepted them--if indeed as a child it could have been said of
+her that she accepted anything; she had been unable then, at any rate, to
+bring forward any comparisons.
+
+Now she beheld them, collectively, in their complacent finery, as
+representing a force, a section of the army blocking the heads of the
+passes of the world's progress, resting on their arms, but ready at the
+least uneasy movement from below to man the breastworks, to fling down
+the traitor from above, to fight fiercely for the solidarity of their
+order.  And Alison even believed herself to detect, by something
+indefinable in their attitudes as they stood momentarily conversing
+in lowered voices, an aroused suspicion, an uneasy anticipation.  Her
+imagination went so far as to apprehend, as they greeted her unwonted
+appearance, that they read in it an addition to other vague and
+disturbing phenomena.  Her colour was high.
+
+"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Atterbury, "I thought you had gone back to New
+York long ago!"
+
+Beside his mother stood Gordon--more dried up, it seemed, than ever.
+Alison recalled him, as on this very spot, a thin, pale boy in short
+trousers, and Mrs. Atterbury a beautiful and controlled young matron
+associated with St. John's and with children's parties.  She was
+wonderful yet, with her white hair and straight nose, her erect figure
+still slight.  Alison knew that Mrs. Atterbury had never forgiven her for
+rejecting her son--or rather for being the kind of woman who could reject
+him.
+
+"Surely you haven't been here all summer?"
+
+Alison admitted it, characteristically, without explanations.
+
+"It seems so natural to see you here at the old church, after all these
+years," the lady went on, and Alison was aware that Mrs. Atterbury
+questioned--or rather was at a loss for the motives which had led such an
+apostate back to the fold.  "We must thank Mr. Hodder, I suppose.  He's
+very remarkable.  I hear he is resuming the services to-day for the first
+time since June."
+
+Alison was inclined to read a significance into Mrs. Atterbury's glance
+at her son, who was clearing his throat.
+
+"But--where is Mr. Parr?" he asked.  "I understand he has come back from
+his cruise."
+
+"Yes, he is back.  I came without--him---as you see."
+
+She found a certain satisfaction in adding to the mystification, to the
+disquietude he betrayed by fidgeting more than usual.
+
+"But--he always comes when he is in town.  Business--I suppose--ahem!"
+
+"No," replied Alison, dropping her bomb with cruel precision, "he has
+gone to Calvary."
+
+The agitation was instantaneous.
+
+"To Calvary!" exclaimed mother and son in one breath.
+
+"Why?"  It was Gordon who demanded.  "A--a special occasion there--a
+bishop or something?"
+
+"I'm afraid you must ask him," she said.
+
+She was delayed on the steps, first by Nan Ferguson, then by the
+Laureston Greys, and her news outdistanced her to the porch.  Charlotte
+Plimpton looking very red and solid, her eyes glittering with excitement,
+blocked her way.
+
+"Alison?" she cried, in the slightly nasal voice that was a Gore
+inheritance, "I'm told your father's gone to Calvary!  Has Mr. Hodder
+offended him?  I heard rumours--Wallis seems to be afraid that something
+has happened."
+
+"He hasn't said anything about it to me, Charlotte," said Alison, in
+quiet amusement," but then he wouldn't, you know.  I don't live here any
+longer, and he has no reason to think that I would be interested in
+church matters."
+
+"But--why did you come?" Charlotte demanded, with Gore naivete.
+
+Alison smiled.
+
+"You mean--what was my motive?"
+
+Charlotte actually performed the miracle of getting redder.  She was
+afraid of Alison--much more afraid since she had known of her vogue in
+the East.  When Alison had put into execution the astounding folly (to
+the Gore mind) of rejecting the inheritance of millions to espouse a
+profession, it had been Charlotte Plimpton who led the chorus of ridicule
+and disapproval.  But success, to the Charlotte Plimptons, is its own
+justification, and now her ambition (which had ramifications) was to have
+Alison "do" her a garden.  Incidentally, the question had flashed through
+her mind as to how much Alison's good looks had helped towards her
+triumph in certain shining circles.
+
+"Oh, of course I didn't mean that," she hastened to deny, although it was
+exactly what she had meant.  Her curiosity unsatisfied--and not likely to
+be satisfied at once, she shifted abruptly to the other burning subject.
+"I was so glad when I learned you hadn't gone.  Grace Larrabbee's garden
+is a dream, my dear.  Wallis and I stopped there the other day and the
+caretaker showed it to us.  Can't you make a plan for me, so that I may
+begin next spring?  And there's something else I wanted to ask you.
+Wallis and I are going to New York the end of the month.  Shall you be
+there?"
+
+"I don't know," said Alison, cautiously.
+
+"We want so much to see one or two of your gardens on Long Island, and
+especially the Sibleys', on the Hudson.  I know it will be late in the
+season,--but don't you think you could take us, Alison?  And I intend to
+give you a dinner.  I'll write you a note.  Here's Wallis."
+
+"Well, well, well," said Mr. Plimpton, shaking Alison's hand.  "Where's
+father?  I hear he's gone to Calvary."
+
+Alison made her escape.  Inside the silent church, Eleanor Goodrich gave
+her a smile and a pressure of welcome.  Beside her, standing behind the
+rear pew, were Asa Waring and--Mr. Bentley!  Mr. Bentley returned to St.
+John's!
+
+"You have come!" Alison whispered.
+
+He understood her.  He took her hand in his and looked down into her
+upturned face.
+
+"Yes, my dear," he said, "and my girls have come Sally Grover and the
+others, and some friends from Dalton Street and elsewhere."
+
+The news, the sound of this old gentleman's voice and the touch of his
+hand suddenly filled her with a strange yet sober happiness.  Asa Waring,
+though he had not overheard, smiled at her too, as in sympathy.  His
+austere face was curiously illuminated, and she knew instinctively that
+in some way he shared her happiness.  Mr. Bentley had come back!  Yes, it
+was an augury.  From childhood she had always admired Asa Waring, and now
+she felt a closer tie .  .  .  .
+
+She reached the pew, hesitated an instant, and slipped forward on her
+knees.  Years had gone by since she had prayed, and even now she made no
+attempt to translate into words the intensity of her yearning--for what?
+Hodder's success, for one thing,--and by success she meant that he might
+pursue an unfaltering course.  True to her temperament, she did not look
+for the downfall of the forces opposed to him.  She beheld him
+persecuted, yet unyielding, and was thus lifted to an exaltation that
+amazed.  .  .  If he could do it, such a struggle must sorely have an
+ultimate meaning!  Thus she found herself, trembling, on the borderland
+of faith.  .  .
+
+She arose, bewildered, her pulses beating.  And presently glancing about,
+she took in that the church was fuller than she ever remembered having
+seen it, and the palpitating suspense she felt seemed to pervade, as it
+were, the very silence.  With startling abruptness, the silence was
+broken by the tones of the great organ that rolled and reverberated among
+the arches; distant voices took up the processional; the white choir
+filed past,--first the treble voices of the boys, then the deeper notes
+of the--men,--turned and mounted the chancel steps, and then she saw
+Hodder.  Her pew being among the first, he passed very near her.  Did he
+know she would be there?  The sternness of his profile told her nothing.
+He seemed at that moment removed, set apart, consecrated--this was the
+word that came to her, and yet she was keenly conscious of his presence.
+
+Tingling, she found herself repeating, inwardly, two, lines of the hymn
+
+                   "Lay hold on life, and it shall be
+                    Thy joy and crown eternally."
+
+"Lay hold on life!"
+
+The service began,--the well-remembered, beautiful appeal and prayers
+which she could still repeat, after a lapse of time, almost by heart; and
+their music and rhythm, the simple yet magnificent language in which.
+they were clothed--her own language--awoke this morning a racial instinct
+strong in her,--she had not known how strong.  Or was it something in
+Hodder's voice that seemed to illumine the ancient words with a new
+meaning?  Raising her eyes to the chancel she studied his head, and found
+in it still another expression of that race, the history of which had
+been one of protest, of development of its own character and personality.
+Her mind went back to her first talk with him, in the garden, and she saw
+how her intuition had recognized in him then the spirit of a people
+striving to assert itself.
+
+She stood with tightened lips, during the Apostles' Creed, listening to
+his voice as it rose, strong and unfaltering, above the murmur of the
+congregation.
+
+At last she saw him swiftly crossing the chancel, mounting the pulpit
+steps, and he towered above her, a dominant figure, his white surplice
+sharply outlined against the dark stone of the pillar.  The hymn died
+away, the congregation sat down.  There was a sound in the church,
+expectant, presaging, like the stirring of leaves at the first breath of
+wind, and then all was silent.
+
+
+
+II
+
+He had preached for an hour--longer, perhaps.  Alison could not have said
+how long.  She had lost all sense of time.
+
+No sooner had the text been spoken, "Except a man be born again, he
+cannot see the Kingdom of God," than she seemed to catch a fleeting
+glimpse of an hitherto unimagined Personality.  Hundreds of times she
+had heard those words, and they had been as meaningless to her as to
+Nicodemus.  But now--now something was brought home to her of the
+magnificent certainty with which they must first have been spoken,
+of the tone and bearing and authority of him who had uttered them.
+Was Christ like that?  And could it be a Truth, after all, a truth
+only to be grasped by one who had experienced it?
+
+It was in vain that man had tried to evade this, the supreme revelation
+of Jesus Christ, had sought to substitute ceremonies and sacrifices for
+spiritual rebirth.  It was in vain that the Church herself had, from time
+to time, been inclined to compromise.  St. Paul, once the strict Pharisee
+who had laboured for the religion of works, himself had been reborn into
+the religion of the Spirit.  It was Paul who had liberated that message
+of rebirth, which the world has been so long in grasping, from the narrow
+bounds of Palestine and sent it ringing down the ages to the democracies
+of the twentieth century.
+
+And even Paul, though not consciously inconsistent, could not rid himself
+completely of that ancient, automatic, conception of religion which the
+Master condemned, but had on occasions attempted fruitlessly to unite the
+new with the old.  And thus, for a long time, Christianity had been
+wrongly conceived as history, beginning with what to Paul and the Jews
+was an historical event, the allegory of the Garden of Eden, the fall of
+Adam, and ending with the Jewish conception of the Atonement.  This was a
+rationalistic and not a spiritual religion.
+
+The miracle was not the vision, whatever its nature, which Saul beheld on
+the road to Damascus.  The miracle was the result of that vision, the man
+reborn.  Saul, the persecutor of Christians, become Paul, who spent the
+rest of his days, in spite of persecution and bodily infirmities,
+journeying tirelessly up and down the Roman Empire, preaching the risen
+Christ, and labouring more abundantly than they all!  There was no
+miracle in the New Testament more wonderful than this.
+
+The risen Christ!  Let us not trouble ourselves about the psychological
+problems involved, problems which the first century interpreted in its
+own simple way.  Modern, science has taught us this much, at least,
+that we have by no means fathomed the limits even of a transcendent
+personality.  If proofs of the Resurrection and Ascension were demanded,
+let them be spiritual proofs, and there could be none more convincing
+than the life of the transformed Saul, who had given to the modern,
+western world the message of salvation .  .  .  .
+
+That afternoon, as Alison sat motionless on a distant hillside of the
+Park, gazing across the tree-dotted, rolling country to the westward, she
+recalled the breathless silence in the church when he had reached this
+point and paused, looking down at the congregation.  By the subtle
+transmission of thought, of feeling which is characteristic at dramatic
+moments of bodies of people, she knew that he had already contrived to
+stir them to the quick.  It was not so much that these opening words
+might have been startling to the strictly orthodox, but the added fact
+that Hodder had uttered them.  The sensation in the pews, as Alison
+interpreted it and exulted over it, was one of bewildered amazement that
+this was their rector, the same man who had preached to them in June.
+Like Paul, of whom he spoke, he too was transformed, had come to his own,
+radiating a new power that seemed to shine in his face.
+
+Still agitated, she considered that discourse now in her solitude, what
+it meant for him, for her, for the Church and civilization that a
+clergyman should have had the courage to preach it.  He himself had
+seemed unconscious of any courage; had never once--she recalled--been
+sensational.  He had spoken simply, even in the intensest moments of
+denunciation.  And she wondered now how he had managed, without stripping
+himself, without baring the intimate, sacred experiences of his own soul,
+to convey to them, so nobly, the change which had taken place in him....
+
+He began by referring to the hope with which he had come to St. John's,
+and the gradual realization that the church was a failure--a dismal
+failure when compared to the high ideal of her Master.  By her fruits she
+should be known and judged.  From the first he had contemplated, with a
+heavy heart, the sin and misery at their very gates.  Not three blocks
+distant children were learning vice in the streets, little boys of seven
+and eight, underfed and anaemic, were driven out before dawn to sell
+newspapers, little girls thrust forth to haunt the saloons and beg, while
+their own children were warmed and fed.  While their own daughters were
+guarded, young women in Dayton Street were forced to sell themselves into
+a life which meant slow torture, inevitable early death.  Hopeless
+husbands and wives were cast up like driftwood by the cruel, resistless
+flood of modern civilization--the very civilization which yielded their
+wealth and luxury.  The civilization which professed the Spirit of
+Christ, and yet was pitiless.
+
+He confessed to them that for a long time he had been blind to the truth,
+had taken the inherited, unchristian view that the disease which caused
+vice and poverty might not be cured, though its ulcers might be
+alleviated.  He had not, indeed, clearly perceived and recognized the
+disease.  He had regarded Dalton Street in a very special sense as a
+reproach to St. John's, but now he saw that all such neighbourhoods were
+in reality a reproach to the city, to the state, to the nation.  True
+Christianity and Democracy were identical, and the congregation of St.
+John's, as professed Christians and citizens, were doubly responsible,
+inasmuch as they not only made no protest or attempt to change a
+government which permitted the Dalton Streets to exist, but inasmuch also
+as,--directly or indirectly,--they derived a profit from conditions which
+were an abomination to God.  It would be but an idle mockery for them to
+go and build a settlement house, if they did not first reform their
+lives.
+
+Here there had been a decided stir among the pews.  Hodder had not seemed
+to notice it.
+
+When he, their rector, had gone to Dalton Street to invite the poor and
+wretched into God's Church, he was met by the scornful question: "Are the
+Christians of the churches any better than we?  Christians own the grim
+tenements in which we live, the saloons and brothels by which we are
+surrounded, which devour our children.  Christians own the establishments
+which pay us starvation wages; profit by politics, and take toll from our
+very vice; evade the laws and reap millions, while we are sent to jail.
+Is their God a God who will lift us out of our misery and distress?  Are
+their churches for the poor?  Are not the very pews in which they sit as
+closed to us as their houses?"
+
+"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot.  I would thou wert
+cold or hot."
+
+One inevitable conclusion of such a revelation was that he had not
+preached to them the vital element of Christianity.  And the very fact
+that his presentation of religion had left many indifferent or
+dissatisfied was proof-positive that he had dwelt upon non-essentials,
+laid emphasis upon the mistaken interpretations of past ages.  There
+were those within the Church who were content with this, who--like the
+Pharisees of old--welcomed a religion which did not interfere with their
+complacency, with their pursuit of pleasure and wealth, with their
+special privileges; welcomed a Church which didn't raise her voice
+against the manner of their lives--against the order, the Golden Calf
+which they had set up, which did not accuse them of deliberately
+retarding the coming of the Kingdom of God.
+
+Ah, that religion was not religion, for religion was a spiritual,
+not a material affair.  In that religion, vainly designed by man as a
+compromise between God and Mammon, there was none of the divine
+discontent of the true religion of the Spirit, no need of the rebirth of
+the soul.  And those who held it might well demand, with Nicodemus and
+the rulers of the earth, "How can these things be?"
+
+And there were others who still lingered in the Church, perplexed and
+wistful, who had come to him and confessed that the so-called catholic
+acceptance of divine truths, on which he had hitherto dwelt, meant
+nothing to them.  To these, in particular, he owed a special reparation,
+and he took this occasion to announce a series of Sunday evening sermons
+on the Creeds.  So long as the Creeds remained in the Prayer Book it was
+his duty to interpret them in terms not only of modern thought, but in
+harmony with the real significance of the Person and message of Jesus
+Christ.  Those who had come to him questioning, he declared, were a
+thousand times right in refusing to accept the interpretations of other
+men, the consensus of opinion of more ignorant ages, expressed in an
+ancient science and an archaic philosophy.
+
+And what should be said of the vast and ever increasing numbers of those
+not connected with the Church, who had left it or were leaving it? and of
+the less fortunate to whose bodily wants they had been ministering in the
+parish house, for whom it had no spiritual message, and who never entered
+its doors?  The necessity of religion, of getting in touch with, of
+dependence on the Spirit of the Universe was inherent in man, and yet
+there were thousands--nay, millions in the nation to-day in whose hearts
+was an intense and unsatisfied yearning, who perceived no meaning in
+life, no Cause for which to work, who did not know what Christianity was,
+who had never known what it was, who wist not where to turn to find out.
+Education had brought many of them to discern, in the Church's teachings,
+an anachronistic medley of myths and legends, of theories of schoolmen
+and theologians, of surviving pagan superstitions which could not be
+translated into life.  They saw, in Christianity, only the adulterations
+of the centuries.  If any one needed a proof of the yearning people felt,
+let him go to the bookshops, or read in the publishers' lists to-day the
+announcements of books on religion.  There was no supply where there was
+no demand.
+
+Truth might no longer be identified with Tradition, and the day was past
+when councils and synods might determine it for all mankind.  The era of
+forced acceptance of philosophical doctrines and dogmas was past, and
+that of freedom, of spiritual rebirth, of vicarious suffering, of willing
+sacrifice and service for a Cause was upon them.  That cause was
+Democracy.  Christ was uniquely the Son of God because he had lived and
+suffered and died in order to reveal to the world the meaning of this
+life and of the hereafter--the meaning not only for the individual, but
+for society as well.  Nothing might be added to or subtracted from that
+message--it was complete.
+
+True faith was simply trusting--trusting that Christ gave to the world
+the revelation of God's plan.  And the Saviour himself had pointed out
+the proof: "If any man do his will, he shall know of the doctrine,
+whether it be of God, or whether I speak for myself."  Christ had
+repeatedly rebuked those literal minds which had demanded material
+evidence: true faith spurned it, just as true friendship, true love
+between man and man, true trust scorned a written bond.  To paraphrase
+St. James's words, faith without trust is dead--because faith without
+trust is impossible.  God is a Spirit, only to be recognized in the
+Spirit, and every one of the Saviour's utterances were--not of the flesh,
+of the man--but of the Spirit within him.  "He that hath seen me hath
+seen the Father; "and "Why callest thou me good? none is good save one,
+that is, God."  The Spirit, the Universal Meaning of Life, incarnate in
+the human Jesus.
+
+To be born again was to overcome our spiritual blindness, and then,
+and then only, we might behold the spirit shining in the soul of Christ.
+That proof had sufficed for Mark, had sufficed for the writer of the
+sublime Fourth Gospel, had sufficed for Paul.  Let us lift this wondrous
+fact, once and for all, out of the ecclesiastical setting and incorporate
+it into our lives.  Nor need the hearts of those who seek the Truth, who
+fear not to face it, be troubled if they be satisfied, from the Gospels,
+that the birth of Jesus was not miraculous.  The physical never could
+prove the spiritual, which was the real and everlasting, which no
+discovery in science or history can take from us.  The Godship of Christ
+rested upon no dogma, it was a conviction born into us with the new
+birth.  And it becomes an integral part of our personality, our very
+being.
+
+The secret, then, lay in a presentation of the divine message which would
+convince and transform and electrify those who heard it to action--a
+presentation of the message in terms which the age could grasp.  That is
+what Paul had done, he had drawn his figures boldly from the customs of
+the life of his day, but a more or less intimate knowledge of these
+ancient customs were necessary before modern men and women could
+understand those figures and parallels.  And the Church must awake
+to her opportunities, to her perception of the Cause. . . .
+
+What, then, was the function, the mission of the Church Universal?  Once
+she had laid claim to temporal power, believed herself to be the sole
+agency of God on earth, had spoken ex cathedra on philosophy, history,
+theology, and science, had undertaken to confer eternal bliss and to damn
+forever.  Her members, and even her priests, had gone from murder to
+mass and from mass to murder, and she had engaged in cruel wars and
+persecutions to curtail the liberties of mankind.  Under that conception
+religion was a form of insurance of the soul.  Perhaps a common,
+universal belief had been necessary in the dark ages before the sublime
+idea of education for the masses had come; but the Church herself--
+through ignorance--had opposed the growth of education, had set her
+face sternly against the development of the individual, which Christ had
+taught, the privilege of man to use the faculties of the intellect which
+God had bestowed upon him.  He himself, their rector, had advocated a
+catholic acceptance, though much modified from the mediaeval acceptance,
+--one that professed to go behind it to an earlier age.  Yes, he must
+admit with shame that he had been afraid to trust where God trusted, had
+feared to confide the working out of the ultimate Truth of the minds of
+the millions.
+
+The Church had been monarchical in form, and some strove stubbornly
+and blindly to keep her monarchical.  Democracy in government was
+outstripping her.  Let them look around, to-day, and see what was
+happening in the United States of America.  A great movement was going on
+to transfer actual participation in government from the few to the many,
+--a movement towards true Democracy, and that was precisely what was
+about to happen in the Church.  Her condition at present was one of
+uncertainty, transition--she feared to let go wholly of the old, she
+feared to embark upon the new.  Just as the conservatives and politicians
+feared to give up the representative system, the convention, so was she
+afraid to abandon the synod, the council, and trust to man.
+
+The light was coming slowly, the change, the rebirth of the Church by
+gradual evolution.  By the grace of God those who had laid the
+foundations of the Church in which he stood, of all Protestantism, had
+built for the future.  The racial instinct in them had asserted itself,
+had warned them that to suppress freedom in religion were to suppress it
+in life, to paralyze that individual initiative which was the secret of
+their advancement.
+
+The new Church Universal, then, would be the militant, aggressive body of
+the reborn, whose mission it was to send out into the life of the nation
+transformed men and women who would labour unremittingly for the Kingdom
+of God.  Unity would come--but unity in freedom, true Catholicity.  The
+truth would gradually pervade the masses--be wrought out by them.  Even
+the great evolutionary forces of the age, such as economic necessity,
+were acting to drive divided Christianity into consolidation, and the
+starving churches of country villages were now beginning to combine.
+
+No man might venture to predict the details of the future organization of
+the united Church, although St. Paul himself had sketched it in broad
+outline: every worker, lay and clerical, labouring according to his gift,
+teachers, executives, ministers, visitors, missionaries, healers of sick
+and despondent souls.  But the supreme function of the Church was to
+inspire--to inspire individuals to willing service for the cause, the
+Cause of Democracy, the fellowship of mankind.  If she failed to inspire,
+the Church would wither and perish.  And therefore she must revive again
+the race of inspirers, prophets, modern Apostles to whom this gift was
+given, going on their rounds, awaking cities and arousing whole country-
+sides.
+
+But whence--it might be demanded by the cynical were the prophets to
+come?  Prophets could not be produced by training and education; prophets
+must be born.  Reborn,--that was the word.  Let the Church have faith.
+Once her Cause were perceived, once her whole energy were directed
+towards its fulfilment, the prophets would arise, out of the East and out
+of the West, to stir mankind to higher effort, to denounce fearlessly the
+shortcomings and evils of the age.  They had not failed in past ages,
+when the world had fallen into hopelessness, indifference, and darkness.
+And they would not fail now.
+
+Prophets were personalities, and Phillips Brooks himself a prophet--had
+defined personality as a conscious relationship with God.  "All truth,"
+he had said, "comes to the world through personality."  And down the ages
+had come an Apostolic Succession of personalities.  Paul, Augustine,
+Francis, Dante, Luther, Milton,--yes, and Abraham Lincoln, and Phillips
+Brooks, whose Authority was that of the Spirit, whose light had so shone
+before men that they had glorified the Father which was in heaven; the
+current of whose Power had so radiated, in ever widening circles, as to
+make incandescent countless other souls.
+
+And which among them would declare that Abraham Lincoln, like Stephen,
+had not seen his Master in the sky?
+
+The true prophet, the true apostle, then, was one inspired and directed
+by the Spirit, the laying on of hands was but a symbol,--the symbol of
+the sublime truth that one personality caught fire from another.  Let the
+Church hold fast to that symbol, as an acknowledgment, a reminder of a
+supreme mystery.  Tradition had its value when it did not deteriorate
+into superstition, into the mechanical, automatic transmission
+characteristic of the mediaeval Church, for the very suggestion of which
+Peter had rebuked Simon in Samaria.  For it would be remembered that
+Simon had said: "Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands,
+he may receive the Holy Ghost."
+
+The true successor to the Apostles must be an Apostle himself.
+
+Jesus had seldom spoken literally, and the truths he sought to impress
+upon the world had of necessity been clothed in figures and symbols,--for
+spiritual truths might be conveyed in no other way.  The supreme proof of
+his Godship, of his complete knowledge of the meaning of life was to be
+found in his parables.  To the literal, material mind, for example, the
+parable of the talents was merely an unintelligible case of injustice....
+What was meant by the talents?  They were opportunities for service.
+Experience taught us that when we embraced one opportunity, one
+responsibility, the acceptance of it invariably led to another, and so
+the servant who had five talents, five opportunities, gained ten.  The
+servant who had two gained two more.  But the servant of whom only one
+little service was asked refused that, and was cast into outer darkness,
+to witness another performing the task which should have been his.  Hell,
+here and hereafter, was the spectacle of wasted opportunity, and there is
+no suffering to compare to it.
+
+The crime, the cardinal sin was with those who refused to serve, who shut
+their eyes to the ideal their Lord had held up, who strove to compromise
+with Jesus Christ himself, to twist and torture his message to suit their
+own notions as to how life should be led; to please God and Mammon at the
+same time, to bind Christ's Church for their comfort and selfish
+convenience.  Of them it was written, that they shut up the Kingdom of
+Heaven against men; for they neither go in themselves, neither suffer
+them that are entering to go in.  Were these any better than the people
+who had crucified the Lord for his idealism, and because he had not
+brought them the material Kingdom for which they longed?
+
+That servant who had feared to act, who had hid his talent in the ground,
+who had said unto his lord, "I knew thee that thou art an hard man,
+reaping where thou hadst not sown," was the man without faith, the
+atheist who sees only cruelty and indifference in the order of things,
+who has no spiritual sight.  But to the other servants it was said, "Thou
+halt been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many
+things.  Enter thou into the joy of thy lord."
+
+The meaning of life, then, was service, and by life our Lord did not mean
+mere human existence, which is only a part of life.  The Kingdom of
+heaven is a state, and may begin here.  And that which we saw around us
+was only one expression of that eternal life--a medium to work through,
+towards God.  All was service, both here and hereafter, and he that had
+not discovered that the joy of service was the only happiness worth
+living for could have no conception of the Kingdom.  To those who knew,
+there was no happiness like being able to say, "I have found my place in
+God's plan, I am of use."  Such was salvation .  .  .  .
+
+And in the parable of the Prodigal Son may be read the history of what
+are known as the Protestant nations.  What happens logically when the
+individual is suddenly freed from the restraint of external authority
+occurred when Martin Luther released the vital spark of Christianity,
+which he got from Paul, and from Christ himself--the revelation of
+individual responsibility, that God the Spirit would dwell, by grace, in
+the individual soul.  Ah, we had paid a terrible yet necessary price for
+freedom.  We had wandered far from the Father, we had been reduced to
+the very husks of individualism, become as swine.  We beheld around us,
+to-day, selfishness, ruthless competition, as great contrasts between
+misery and luxury as in the days of the Roman Empire.  But should we, for
+that reason, return to the leading-strings of authority?  Could we if we
+would?  A little thought ought to convince us that the liberation of the
+individual could not be revoked, that it had forever destroyed the power
+of authority to carry conviction.  To go back to the Middle Ages would be
+to deteriorate and degenerate.  No, we must go on. . . .
+
+Luther's movement, in religion, had been the logical forerunner of
+democracy, of universal suffrage in government, the death-knell of that
+misinterpretation of Christianity as the bulwark of monarchy and
+hierarchy had been sounded when he said, "Ich kann nicht anders!" The new
+Republic founded on the western continent had announced to the world the
+initiation of the transfer of Authority to the individual soul.  God, the
+counterpart of the King, the ruler in a high heaven of a flat terrestrial
+expanse, outside of the world, was now become the Spirit of a million
+spheres, the indwelling spirit in man.  Democracy and the religion of
+Jesus Christ both consisted in trusting the man--yes, and the woman--whom
+God trusts.  Christianity was individualism carried beyond philosophy
+into religion, and the Christian, the ideal citizen of the democracy, was
+free since he served not because he had to, but because he desired to of
+his own will, which, paradoxically, is God's will.  God was in politics,
+to the confusion of politicians; God in government.  And in some greater
+and higher sense than we had yet perceived, the saying 'vox populi vox
+dei' was eternally true.  He entered into the hearts of people and moved
+them, and so the world progressed.  It was the function of the Church to
+make Christians, until--when the Kingdom of God should come--the blending
+should be complete.  Then Church and State would be identical, since all
+the members of the one would be the citizens of the other .  .  .  .
+
+"I will arise and go to my father."  Rebirth!  A sense of responsibility,
+of consecration.  So we had come painfully through our materialistic
+individualism, through our selfish Protestantism, to a glimpse of the
+true Protestantism--Democracy.
+
+Our spiritual vision was glowing clearer.  We were beginning to perceive
+that charity did not consist in dispensing largesse after making a
+fortune at the expense of one's fellow-men; that there was something
+still wrong in a government that permits it.  It was gradually becoming
+plain to us, after two thousand years, that human bodies and souls
+rotting in tenements were more valuable than all the forests on all the
+hills; that government, Christian government, had something to do with
+these.
+
+We should embody, in government, those sublime words of the Master,
+"Suffer little children to come unto me."  And the government of the
+future would care for the little children.  We were beginning to do it.
+Here, as elsewhere, Christianity and reason went hand in hand, for the
+child became the man who either preyed on humanity and filled the prisons
+and robbed his fellows, or else grew into a useful, healthy citizen.  It
+was nothing less than sheer folly as well as inhuman cruelty to let the
+children sleep in crowded, hot rooms, reeking with diseases, and run wild
+throughout the long summer, learning vice in the city streets.  And we
+still had slavery--economic slavery--yes, and the more horrible slavery
+of women and young girls in vice--as much a concern of government as the
+problem which had confronted it in 1861 .  .  .  .  We were learning that
+there was something infinitely more sacred than property .  .  .  .
+
+And now Alison recalled, only to be thrilled again by an electric
+sensation she had never before experienced with such intensity, the look
+of inspiration on the preacher's face as he closed.  The very mists of
+the future seemed to break before his importuning gaze, and his eyes
+seemed indeed to behold, against the whitening dawn of the spiritual age
+he predicted, the slender spires of a new Church sprung from the
+foundations of the old.  A Church, truly catholic, tolerant, whose
+portals were wide in welcome to all mankind.  The creative impulse,
+he had declared, was invariably religious, the highest art but the
+expression of the mute yearnings of a people, of a race.  Thus had once
+arisen, all over Europe, those wonderful cathedrals which still cast
+their spell upon the world, and art to-day would respond--was responding
+--to the unutterable cravings of mankind, would strive once more to
+express in stone and glass and pigment what nations felt.  Generation
+after generation would labour with unflagging zeal until the art
+sculptured fragment of the new Cathedral--the new Cathedral of Democracy
+--pointed upward toward the blue vault of heaven.  Such was his vision--
+God the Spirit, through man reborn, carrying out his great Design .  .  .
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+"WHICH SAY TO THE SEERS, SEE NOT"
+
+
+I
+
+As Alison arose from her knees and made her way out of the pew, it was
+the expression on Charlotte Plimpton's face which brought her back once
+more to a sense of her surroundings; struck her, indeed, like a physical
+blow.  The expression was a scandalized one.  Mrs. Plimpton had moved
+towards her, as if to speak, but Alison hurried past, her exaltation
+suddenly shattered, replaced by a rising tide of resentment, of angry
+amazement against a materialism so solid as to remain unshaken by the
+words which had so uplifted her.  Eddies were forming in the aisle as
+the people streamed slowly out of the church, and snatches of their
+conversation, in undertones, reached her ears.
+
+"I should never have believed it!"
+
+"Mr. Hodder, of all men.  .  ."
+
+"The bishop!"
+
+Outside the swinging doors, in the vestibule, the voices were raised a
+little, and she found her path blocked.
+
+"It's incredible!" she heard Gordon Atterbury saying to little Everett
+Constable, who was listening gloomily.
+
+"Sheer Unitarianism, socialism, heresy."
+
+His attention was forcibly arrested by Alison, in whose cheeks bright
+spots of colour burned.  He stepped aside, involuntarily, apologetically,
+as though he had instinctively read in her attitude an unaccountable
+disdain.  Everett Constable bowed uncertainly, for Alison scarcely
+noticed them.
+
+"Ahem!" said Gordon, nervously, abandoning his former companion and
+joining her, "I was just saying, it's incredible--"
+
+She turned on him.
+
+"It is incredible," she cried, "that persons who call themselves
+Christians cannot recognize their religion when they hear it preached."
+
+He gave back before her, visibly, in an astonishment which would have
+been ludicrous but for her anger.  He had never understood her--such
+had been for him her greatest fascination;--and now she was less
+comprehensible than ever.  The time had been when he would cheerfully
+have given over his hope of salvation to have been able to stir her.
+He had never seen her stirred, and the sight of her even now in this
+condition was uncomfortably agitating.  Of all things, an heretical
+sermon would appear to have accomplished this miracle!
+
+"Christianity!" he stammered.
+
+"Yes, Christianity."  Her voice tingled.  "I don't pretend to know much
+about it, but Mr. Hodder has at least made it plain that it is something
+more than dead dogmas, ceremonies, and superstitions."
+
+He would have said something, but her one thought was to escape, to be
+alone.  These friends of her childhood were at that moment so distasteful
+as to have become hateful.  Some one laid a hand upon her arm.
+
+"Can't we take you home, Alison?  I don't see your motor."
+
+It was Mrs. Constable.
+
+"No, thanks--I'm going to walk," Alison answered, yet something in Mrs.
+Constable's face, in Mrs. Constable's voice, made her pause.  Something
+new, something oddly sympathetic.  Their eyes met, and Alison saw that
+the other woman's were tired, almost haggard--yet understanding.
+
+"Mr. Hodder was right--a thousand times right, my dear," she said.
+
+Alison could only stare at her, and the crimson in the bright spots of
+her cheeks spread over her face.  Why had Mrs. Constable supposed that
+she would care to hear the sermon praised?  But a second glance put her
+in possession of the extraordinary fact that Mrs. Constable herself was
+profoundly moved.
+
+"I knew he would change," she went on, "I have seen for some time that he
+was too big a man not to change.  But I had no conception that he would
+have such power, and such courage, as he has shown this morning.  It is
+not only that he dared to tell us what we were--smaller men might have
+done that, and it is comparatively easy to denounce.  But he has the
+vision to construct, he is a seer himself--he has really made me see
+what Christianity is.  And as long as I live I shall never forget
+those closing sentences."
+
+"And now?"  asked Alison.  "And now what will happen?"
+
+Mrs. Constable changed colour.  Her tact, on which she prided herself,
+had deserted her in a moment of unlooked-for emotion.
+
+"Oh, I know that my father and the others will try to put him out--but
+can they?" Alison asked.
+
+It was Mrs. Constable's turn to stare.  The head she suddenly and
+impulsively put forth trembled on Alison's wrist.
+
+"I don't know, Alison--I'm afraid they can.  It is too terrible to think
+about.  .  . . And they can't--they won't believe that many changes are
+coming, that this is but one of many signs.  .  .  Do come and see me."
+
+Alison left her, marvelling at the passage between them, and that, of all
+persons in the congregation of St. John's, the lightning should have
+struck Mrs. Constable.  .  .
+
+Turning to the right on Burton Street, she soon found herself walking
+rapidly westward through deserted streets lined by factories and
+warehouses, and silent in the Sabbath calm .  .  .  .  She thought of
+Hodder, she would have liked to go to him in that hour .  .  .  .
+
+In Park Street, luncheon was half over, and Nelson Langmaid was at the
+table with her father.  The lawyer glanced at her curiously as she
+entered the room, and his usual word of banter, she thought, was rather
+lame.  The two went on, for some time, discussing a railroad suit in
+Texas.  And Alison, as she hurried through her meal, leaving the dishes
+almost untouched, scarcely heard them.  Once, in her reverie, her
+thoughts reverted to another Sunday when Hodder had sat, an honoured
+guest, in the chair which Mr. Langmaid now occupied .  .  .  .
+
+It was not until they got up from the table that her father turned to
+her.
+
+"Did you have a good sermon?  " he asked.
+
+It was the underlying note of challenge to which she responded.
+
+"The only good sermon I have ever heard."
+
+Their eyes met.  Langmaid looked down at the tip of his cigar.
+
+"Mr. Hodder," said Eldon Parr, "is to be congratulated."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Hodder, when the service was over, had sought the familiar recess in the
+robing-room, the words which he himself had spoken still ringing in his
+ears.  And then he recalled the desperate prayer with which he had
+entered the pulpit, that it might be given him in that hour what to say:
+the vivid memories of the passions and miseries in Dalton Street, the
+sudden, hot response of indignation at the complacency confronting him.
+His voice had trembled with anger .  .  .  .  He remembered, as he had
+paused in his denunciation of these who had eyes and saw not, meeting the
+upturned look of Alison Parr, and his anger had turned to pity for their
+blindness--which once had been his own; and he had gone on and on,
+striving to interpret for them his new revelation of the message of the
+Saviour, to impress upon them the dreadful yet sublime meaning of life
+eternal.  And it was in that moment the vision of the meaning of the
+evolution of his race, of the Prodigal turning to responsibility--of
+which he once had had a glimpse--had risen before his eyes in its
+completeness--the guiding hand of God in history!  The Spirit in these
+complacent souls, as yet unstirred .  .  .  .
+
+So complete, now, was his forgetfulness of self, of his future, of the
+irrevocable consequences of the step he had taken, that it was only
+gradually he became aware that some one was standing near him, and
+with a start he recognized McCrae.
+
+"There are some waiting to speak to ye," his assistant said.
+
+"Oh!" Hodder exclaimed.  He began, mechanically, to divest himself of his
+surplice.  McCrae stood by.
+
+"I'd like to say a word, first--if ye don't mind--" he began.
+
+The rector looked at him quickly.
+
+"I'd like just to thank ye for that sermon--I can say no more now," said
+McCrae; he turned away, and left the room abruptly.
+
+This characteristic tribute from the inarticulate, loyal Scotchman left
+him tingling .  .  .  .  He made his way to the door and saw the people
+in the choir room, standing silently, in groups, looking toward him.
+Some one spoke to him, and he recognized Eleanor Goodrich.
+
+"We couldn't help coming, Mr. Hodder--just to tell you how much we admire
+you.  It was wonderful, what you said."
+
+He grew hot with gratitude, with thankfulness that there were some who
+understood--and that this woman was among them, and her husband .  .  .
+Phil Goodrich took him by the hand.
+
+"I can understand that kind of religion," he said.  "And, if necessary,
+I can fight for it.  I have come to enlist."
+
+"And I can understand it, too," added the sunburned Evelyn.  "I hope you
+will let me help."
+
+That was all they said, but Hodder understood.  Eleanor Goodrich's eyes
+were dimmed as she smiled an her sister and her husband--a smile that
+bespoke the purest quality of pride.  And it was then, as they made way
+for others, that the full value of their allegiance was borne in upon
+him, and he grasped the fact that the intangible barrier which had
+separated him from them had at last been broken down: His look followed
+the square shoulders and aggressive, close-cropped head of Phil Goodrich,
+the firm, athletic figure of Evelyn, who had represented to him an entire
+class of modern young women, vigorous, athletic, with a scorn of cant in
+which he secretly sympathized, hitherto frankly untouched by spiritual
+interests of any sort.  She had, indeed, once bluntly told him that
+church meant nothing to her .  .  .  .
+
+In that little company gathered in the choir room were certain members of
+his congregation whom, had he taken thought, he would least have expected
+to see.  There were Mr. and Mrs. Bradley, an elderly couple who had
+attended St. John's for thirty years; and others of the same
+unpretentious element of his parish who were finding in modern life an
+increasingly difficult and bewildering problem.  There was little Miss
+Tallant, an assiduous guild worker whom he had thought the most orthodox
+of persons; Miss Ramsay, who taught the children of the Italian mothers;
+Mr. Carton, the organist, a professed free-thinker, with whom Hodder had
+had many a futile argument; and Martha Preston, who told him that he had
+made her think about religion seriously for the first time in her life.
+
+And there were others, types equally diverse.  Young men of the choir,
+and others whom he had never seen, who informed him shyly that they would
+come again, and bring their friends .  .  .  .
+
+And all the while, in the background, Hodder had been aware of a familiar
+face--Horace Bentley's.  Beside him, when at length he drew near, was his
+friend Asa Waring--a strangely contrasted type.  The uncompromising eyes
+of a born leader of men flashed from beneath the heavy white eyebrows,
+the button of the Legion of Honour gleaming in his well-kept coat seemed
+emblematic of the fire which in his youth had driven him forth to fight
+for the honour of his country--a fire still undimmed.  It was he who
+spoke first.
+
+"This is a day I never expected to see, Mr. Hodder," he said, "for it has
+brought back to this church the man to whom it owes its existence.  Mr.
+Bentley did more, by his labour and generosity, his true Christianity,
+his charity and his wisdom, for St. John's than any other individual.
+It is you who have brought him back, and I wish personally to express
+my gratitude."
+
+Mr. Bentley, in mild reproof, laid his hand upon the t, shoulder of his
+old friend.
+
+"Ah, Asa," he protested, "you shouldn't say such things."
+
+"Had it not been for Mr. Bentley," Hodder explained, "I should not be
+here to-day."
+
+Asa Waring pierced the rector with his eye, appreciating the genuine
+feeling with which these words were spoken.  And yet his look contained
+a question.
+
+"Mr. Bentley," Hodder added, "has been my teacher this summer."
+
+The old gentleman's hand trembled a little on the goldheaded stick.
+
+"It is a matter of more pride to me than I can express, sir, that you are
+the rector of this church with which my most cherished memories are
+associated," he said.  "But I cannot take any part of the credit you give
+me for the splendid vision which you have raised up before us to-day, for
+your inspired interpretation of history, of the meaning of our own times.
+You have moved me, you have given me more hope and courage than I have
+had for many a long year--and I thank you, Mr. Hodder.  I am sure that
+God will prosper and guide you in what you have so nobly undertaken."
+
+Mr. Bentley turned away, walking towards the end of the room .  .  .  .
+Asa Waring broke the silence.
+
+"I didn't know that you knew him, that you had seen what he is doing--
+what he has done in this city.  I cannot trust myself, Mr. Hodder, to
+speak of Horace Bentley's life.  .  .  I feel too strongly on the
+subject.  I have watched, year by year, this detestable spirit of greed,
+this lust for money and power creeping over our country, corrupting our
+people and institutions, and finally tainting the Church itself.  You
+have raised your voice against it, and I respect and honour and thank you
+for it, the more because you have done it without resorting to sensation,
+and apparently with no thought of yourself.  And, incidentally, you have
+explained the Christian religion to me as I have never had it explained
+in my life.
+
+"I need not tell you you have made enemies--powerful ones.  I can see
+that you are a man, and that you are prepared for them.  They will leave
+no stone unturned, will neglect no means to put you out and disgrace you.
+They will be about your ears to-morrow--this afternoon, perhaps.  I need
+not remind you that the outcome is doubtful.  But I came here to assure
+you of my friendship and support in all you hope to accomplish in making
+the Church what it should be.  In any event, what you have done to-day
+will be productive of everlasting good."
+
+In a corner still lingered the group which Mr. Bentley had joined.  And
+Hodder, as he made his way towards it, recognized the faces of some of
+those who composed it.  Sally Grower was there, and the young women who
+lived in Mr. Bentley's house, and others whose acquaintance he had made
+during the summer.  Mrs. Garvin had brought little Dicky, incredibly
+changed from the wan little figure he had first beheld in the stifling
+back room in Dalton Street; not yet robust, but freckled and tanned by
+the country sun and wind.  The child, whom he had seen constantly in the
+interval, ran forward joyfully, and Hodder bent down to take his hand....
+
+These were his friends, emblematic of the new relationship in which he
+stood to mankind.  And he owed them to Horace Bentley!  He wondered, as
+he greeted them, whether they knew what their allegiance meant to him in
+this hour.  But it sufficed that they claimed him as their own.
+
+Behind them all stood Kate Marcy.  And it struck him for the first time,
+as he gazed at her earnestly, how her appearance had changed.  She gave
+him a frightened, bewildered look, as though she were unable to identify
+him now with the man she had known in the Dalton Street flat, in the
+restaurant.  She was still struggling, groping, wondering, striving to
+accustom herself to the higher light of another world.
+
+"I wanted to come," she faltered.  "Sally Grower brought me.  .  .  "
+
+Hodder went back with them to Dalton Street.  His new ministry had begun.
+And on this, the first day of it, it was fitting that he should sit at
+the table of Horace Bentley, even as on that other Sunday, two years
+agone, he had gone to the home of the first layman of the diocese,
+Eldon Parr.
+
+
+
+III
+
+The peace of God passes understanding because sorrow and joy are mingled
+therein, sorrow and joy and striving.  And thus the joy of emancipation
+may be accompanied by a heavy heart.  The next morning, when Hodder
+entered his study, he sighed as his eye fell upon the unusual pile of
+letters on his desk, for their writers had once been his friends.  The
+inevitable breach had come at last.
+
+Most of the letters, as he had anticipated, were painful reading.
+And the silver paper-cutter with which he opened the first had been a
+Christmas present from Mrs. Burlingame, who had penned it, a lady of
+signal devotion to the church, who for many years had made it her task to
+supply and arrange the flowers on the altar.  He had amazed and wounded
+her--she declared--inexpressibly, and she could no longer remain at St.
+John's--for the present, at least.  A significant addition.  He dropped
+the letter, and sat staring out of the window .  .  .  presently arousing
+himself, setting himself resolutely to the task of reading the rest.
+
+In the mood in which he found himself he did not atop to philosophize
+on the rigid yet sincere attitude of the orthodox.  His affection for
+many of them curiously remained, though it was with some difficulty he
+strove to reconstruct a state of mind with which he had once agreed.
+If Christianity were to sweep on, these few unbending but faithful ones
+must be sacrificed: such was the law.  .  .  Many, while repudiating his
+new beliefs--or unbeliefs!--added, to their regrets of the change in him,
+protestations of a continued friendship, a conviction of his sincerity.
+Others like Mrs. Atterbury, were frankly outraged and bitter.  The
+contents of one lilac-bordered envelope brought to his eyes a faint
+smile.  Did he know--asked the sender of this--could he know the
+consternation he had caused in so many persons, including herself?
+What was she to believe?  And wouldn't he lunch with her on Thursday?
+
+Mrs. Ferguson's letter brought another smile--more thoughtful.
+Her incoherent phrases had sprung from the heart, and the picture rose
+before him of the stout but frightened, good-natured lady who had never
+accustomed herself to the enjoyment of wealth and luxury.  Mr. Ferguson
+was in such a state, and he must please not tell her husband that she had
+written.  Yet much in his sermon had struck her as so true.  It seemed
+wrong to her to have so much, and others so little!  And he had made her
+remember many things in her early life she had forgotten.  She hoped he
+would see Mr. Ferguson, and talk to him. . . .
+
+Then there was Mrs. Constable's short note, that troubled and puzzled
+him.  This, too, had in it an undercurrent of fear, and the memory came
+to him of the harrowing afternoon he had once spent with her, when she
+would have seemed to have predicted the very thing which had now happened
+to him.  And yet not that thing.  He divined instinctively that a maturer
+thought on the subject of his sermon had brought on an uneasiness as the
+full consequences of this new teaching had dawned upon her consequences
+which she had not foreseen when she had foretold the change.  And he
+seemed to read between the lines that the renunciation he demanded was
+too great.  Would he not let her come and talk to him?  .  .  .
+
+Miss Brewer, a lady of no inconsiderable property, was among those who
+told him plainly that if he remained they would have to give up their
+pews.  Three or four communications were even more threatening.  Mr.
+Alpheus Gore, Mrs. Plimpton's brother, who at five and forty had managed
+to triple his share of the Gore inheritance, wrote that it would be his
+regretful duty to send to the bishop an Information on the subject of Mr.
+Hodder's sermon.
+
+There were, indeed, a few letters which he laid, thankfully, in a pile by
+themselves.  These were mostly from certain humble members of his parish
+who had not followed their impulses to go to him after the service, or
+from strangers who had chanced to drop into the church.  Some were
+autobiographical, such as those of a trained nurse, a stenographer,
+a hardware clerk who had sat up late Sunday night to summarize what that
+sermon had meant to him, how a gray and hopeless existence had taken on a
+new colour.  Next Sunday he would bring a friend who lived in the same
+boarding house .  .  .  .  Hodder read every word of these, and all were
+in the same strain: at last they could perceive a meaning to religion,
+an application of it to such plodding lives as theirs .  .  .  .
+
+One or two had not understood, but had been stirred, and were coming to
+talk to him.  Another was filled with a venomous class hatred. . . .
+
+The first intimation he had of the writer of another letter seemed from
+the senses rather than the intellect.  A warm glow suffused him, mounted
+to his temples as he stared at the words, turned over the sheet, and read
+at the bottom the not very legible signature.  The handwriting, by no
+means classic, became then and there indelibly photographed on his brain,
+and summed up for him the characteristics, the warring elements in Alison
+Parr.  "All afternoon," she wrote, "I have been thinking of your sermon.
+It was to me very wonderful--it lifted me out of myself.  And oh, I want
+so much to believe unreservedly what you expressed so finely, that
+religion is democracy, or the motive power behind democracy--the service
+of humanity by the reborn.  I understand it intellectually.  I am willing
+to work for such a Cause, but there is something in me so hard that I
+wonder if it can dissolve.  And then I am still unable to identify that
+Cause with the Church as at present constituted, with the dogmas and
+ceremonies that still exist.  I am too thorough a radical to have your
+patience.  And I am filled with rage--I can think of no milder word--on
+coming in contact with the living embodiments of that old creed, who hold
+its dogmas so precious.  "Which say to the seers, See not; and to the
+prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things,
+prophesy deceits.'
+
+"You see, I have been reading Isaiah, and when I came to that paragraph
+it seemed so appropriate.  These people have always existed.  And will
+they not always continue to exist?  I wish I could believe, wholly and
+unreservedly, that this class, always preponderant in the world, could be
+changed, diminished--done away with in a brighter future!  I can, at
+least, sympathize with Isaiah's wrath.
+
+"What you said of the longing, the yearning which exists to-day amongst
+the inarticulate millions moved me most--and of the place of art in
+religion, to express that yearning.  Religion the motive power of art,
+and art, too, service.  'Consider the lilies of the field.' You have made
+it, at least, all-comprehensive, have given me a new point of view for
+which I can never be sufficiently grateful--and at a time when I needed
+it desperately.  That you have dared to do what you have done has been
+and will he an inspiration, not only to myself, but to many others.
+This, is a longer letter, I believe, than I have ever written in my life.
+But I wanted you to know."
+
+He reread it twice, pondering over its phrases.  "A new point of view....
+at a time when I needed it desperately."  It was not until then that he
+realized the full intensity of his desire for some expression from her
+since the moment he had caught sight of her in the church.  But he had
+not been prepared for the unreserve, the impulsiveness with which she had
+actually written.  Such was his agitation that he did not heed, at first,
+a knock on the door, which was repeated.  He thrust the letter inside his
+coat as the janitor of the parish house appeared.
+
+"There is a gentleman to see you, sir, in the office," he said.
+
+Hodder went down the stairs.  And he anticipated, from the light yet
+nervous pacing that he heard on the bare floor, that the visitor was none
+other than his vestryman, Mr. Gordon Atterbury.  The sight of the
+gentleman's spruce figure confirmed the guess.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Atterbury," he said as he entered.
+
+Mr. Atterbury stopped in his steps, as if he had heard a shot.
+
+"Ah--good morning, Mr. Hodder.  I stopped in on my way to the office."
+
+"Sit down," said the rector.
+
+Mr. Atterbury sat down, but with the air of a man who does so under
+protest, who had not intended to.  He was visibly filled and almost
+quivering with an excitement which seemed to demand active expression,
+and which the tall clergyman's physical calm and self-possession seemed
+to augment.  For a moment Mr. Atterbury stared at the rector as he sat
+behind his desk.  Then he cleared his throat.
+
+"I thought of writing to you, Mr. Hodder.  My mother, I believe, has done
+so.  But it seemed to me, on second thought, better to come to you
+direct."
+
+The rector nodded, without venturing to remark on the wisdom of the
+course.
+
+"It occurred to me," Mr. Atterbury went on, "that possibly some things I
+wish to discuss might--ahem be dispelled in a conversation.  That I might
+conceivably have misunderstood certain statements in your sermon of
+yesterday."
+
+"I tried," said the rector, "to be as clear as possible."
+
+"I thought you might not fully have realized the effect of what you said.
+I ought to tell you, I think, that as soon as I reached home I wrote out,
+as accurately as I could from memory, the gist of your remarks.  And I
+must say frankly, although I try to put it mildly, that they appear to
+contradict and controvert the doctrines of the Church."
+
+"Which doctrines?" Hodder asked.
+
+Gordon Atterbury sputtered.
+
+"Which doctrines?" he repeated.  "Can it be possible that you
+misunderstand me?  I might refer you to those which you yourself preached
+as late as last June, in a sermon which was one of the finest and most
+scholarly efforts I ever heard."
+
+"It was on that day, Mr. Atterbury," replied the rector, with a touch of
+sadness in his voice, "I made the discovery that fine and scholarly
+efforts were not Christianity."
+
+"What do you mean?"  Mr. Atterbury demanded.
+
+"I mean that they do not succeed in making Christians."
+
+"And by that you imply that the members of your congregation, those who
+have been brought up and baptized and confirmed in this church, are not
+Christians?"
+
+"I am sorry to say a great many of them are not," said the rector.
+
+"In other words, you affirm that the sacrament of baptism is of no
+account."
+
+"I affirm that baptism with water is not sufficient."
+
+"I'm afraid that this is very grave," Mr. Hodder.
+
+"I quite agree with you," replied the rector, looking straight at his
+vestryman.
+
+"And I understood,--" the other went on, clearing his throat once more,
+"I think I have it correctly stated in my notes, but I wish to be quite
+clear, that you denied the doctrine of the virgin birth."
+
+Hodder made a strong effort to control himself.
+
+"What I have said I have said," he answered, "and I have said it in the
+hope that it might make some impression upon the lives of those to whom I
+spoke.  You were one of them, Mr. Atterbury.  And if I repeat and amplify
+my meaning now, it must be understood that I have no other object except
+that of putting you in the way of seeing that the religion of Christ is
+unique in that it is dependent upon no doctrine or dogma, upon no
+external or material sign or proof or authority whatever.  I am utterly
+indifferent to any action you may contemplate taking concerning me.  Read
+your four Gospels carefully.  If we do not arrive, through contemplation
+of our Lord's sojourn on this earth, of his triumph over death, of his
+message--which illuminates the meaning of our lives here--at that inner
+spiritual conversion of which he continually speaks, and which alone will
+give us charity, we are not Christians."
+
+"But the doctrines of the Church, which we were taught from childhood to
+believe?  The doctrines which you once professed, and of which you have
+now made such an unlooked-for repudiation!"
+
+"Yes, I have changed," said the rector, gazing seriously at the twitching
+figure of his vestryman, "I was bound, body and soul, by those very
+doctrines."  He roused himself.  "But on what grounds do you declare, Mr.
+Atterbury," he demanded, somewhat sternly, "that this church is fettered
+by an ancient and dogmatic conception of Christianity?  Where are you to
+find what are called the doctrines of the Church?  What may be heresy in
+one diocese is not so in another, and I can refer to you volumes written
+by ministers of this Church, in good standing, whose published opinions
+are the same as those I expressed in my sermon of yesterday.  The very
+cornerstone of the Church is freedom, but many have yet to discover this,
+and we have held in our Communion men of such divergent views as Dr.
+Pusey and Phillips Brooks.  Mr. Newman, in his Tract Ninety, which was
+sincerely written, showed that the Thirty-nine Articles were capable of
+almost any theological interpretation.  From what authoritative source
+are we to draw our doctrines?  In the baptismal service the articles of
+belief are stated to be in the Apostles' Creed, but nowhere--in this
+Church is it defined how their ancient language is to be interpreted.
+That is wisely left to the individual.  Shall we interpret the Gospels by
+the Creeds, which in turn purport to be interpretations of the Gospels?
+Or shall we draw our conclusions as to what the Creeds may mean to us by
+pondering on the life of Christ, and striving to do his will?
+'The letter killeth, but the Spirit maketh alive.'"
+
+Hodder rose, and stood facing his visitor squarely.  He spoke slowly, and
+the fact that he made no gesture gave all the more force to his words.
+
+"Hereafter, Mr. Atterbury," he added, "so long as I am rector of this
+church, I am going to do my best to carry out the spirit of Christ's
+teaching--to make Christians.  And there shall be no more compromise,
+so far as I can help it."
+
+Gordon Atterbury had grown very pale.  He, too, got to his feet.
+
+"I--I cannot trust myself to discuss this matter with you any further, Mr.
+Hodder.  I feel too deeply--too strongly on the subject.  I do not
+pretend to account for this astonishing transformation in your opinions.
+Up to the present I have deemed St. John's fortunate--peculiarly
+fortunate, in having you for its rector.  I am bound to say I think you
+have not considered, in this change of attitude on your part, those who
+have made St. John's what it is, who through long and familiar
+association are bound to it by a thousand ties,--those who, like myself,
+have what may be called a family interest in this church.  My father and
+mother were married here, I was baptized here.  I think I may go so far
+as to add, Mr. Hodder, that this is our church, the church which a
+certain group of people have built in which to worship God, as was their
+right.  Nor do I believe we can be reproached with a lack of hospitality
+or charity.  We maintain this parish house, with its clubs; and at no
+small inconvenience to ourselves we have permitted the church to remain
+in this district.  There is no better church music in this city, and we
+have a beautiful service in the evening at which, all pews are free.  It
+is not unreasonable that we should have something to say concerning the
+doctrine to be preached here, that we should insist that that doctrine be
+in accordance with what we have always believed was the true doctrine as
+received by this Church."
+
+Up to this point Mr. Atterbury had had a feeling that he had not carried
+out with much distinction the programme which he had so carefully
+rehearsed on the way to the parish house.  Hodder's poise had amazed and
+baffled him--he had expected to find the rector on the defensive.  But
+now, burning anew with a sense of injustice, he had a sense at last of
+putting his case strongly.
+
+The feeling of triumph, however, was short lived.  Hodder did not reply
+at once.  So many seconds, indeed, went by that Mr. Atterbury began once
+more to grow slightly nervous under the strange gaze to which he was
+subjected.  And when the clergyman' spoke there was no anger in his
+voice, but a quality--a feeling which was disturbing, and difficult to
+define.
+
+"You are dealing now, Mr. Atterbury," he said, "with the things of
+Caesar, not of God.  This church belongs to God--not to you.  But you
+have consecrated it to him.  His truth, as Christ taught it, must not be
+preached to suit any man's convenience.  When you were young you were not
+taught the truth--neither was I.  It was mixed with adulterations which
+obscured and almost neutralized it.  But I intend to face it now, and to
+preach it, and not the comfortable compromise which gives us the illusion
+that we are Christians because we subscribe to certain tenets, and
+permits us to neglect our Christian duties.
+
+"And since you have spoken of charity, let me assure you that there is no
+such thing as charity without the transforming, personal touch.  It isn't
+the bread or instruction or amusement we give people vicariously, but the
+effect of our gift--even if that gift be only a cup of cold water--in
+illuminating and changing their lives.  And it will avail any church
+little to have a dozen settlement houses while her members acquiesce in
+a State which refuses to relieve her citizens from sickness and poverty.
+Charity bends down only to lift others up.  And with all our works, our
+expenditure and toil, how many have we lifted up?"
+
+Gordon Atterbury's indignation got the better of him.  For he was the
+last man to behold with patience the shattering of his idols.
+
+"I think you have cast an unwarranted reflection on those who have built
+and made this church what it is, Mr. Hodder," he exclaimed.  "And that
+you will find there are in it many--a great many earnest Christians who
+were greatly shocked by the words you spoke yesterday, who will not
+tolerate any interference with their faith.  I feel it my duty to speak
+frankly, Mr Hodder, disagreeable though it be, in view of our former
+relations.  I must tell you that I am not alone in the opinion that you
+should resign.  It is the least you can do, in justice to us, in justice
+to yourself.  There are other bodies--I cannot call them churches--which
+doubtless would welcome your liberal, and I must add atrophying,
+interpretation of Christianity.  And I trust that reflection will
+convince you of the folly of pushing this matter to the extreme.  We
+should greatly deplore the sensational spectacle of St. John's being
+involved in an ecclesiastical trial, the unpleasant notoriety into which
+it would bring a church hitherto untouched by that sort of thing.  And I
+ought to tell you that I, among others, am about to send an Information
+to the bishop."
+
+Gordon Atterbury hesitated a moment, but getting no reply save an
+inclination of the head, took up his hat.
+
+"Ahem--I think that is all I have to say, Mr. Hodder.  Good morning."
+
+Even then Hodder did not answer, but rose and held open the door.  As he
+made his exit under the strange scrutiny of the clergyman's gaze the
+little vestryman was plainly uncomfortable.  He cleared his throat once
+more, halted, and then precipitately departed.
+
+Hodder went to the window and thoughtfully watched the hurrying figure
+of Mr. Atterbury until it disappeared, almost skipping, around the corner
+.  .  .  .  The germ of truth, throughout the centuries, had lost nothing
+of its dynamic potentialities.  If released and proclaimed it was still
+powerful enough to drive the world to insensate anger and opposition....
+
+As he stood there, lost in reflection, a shining automobile drew up at
+the curb, and from it descended a firm lady in a tight-fitting suit whom
+he recognized as Mrs Wallis Plimpton.  A moment later she had invaded the
+office--for no less a word may be employed to express her physical
+aggressiveness, the glowing health which she radiated.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Hodder," she said, seating herself in one of the
+straight-backed chairs.  "I have been so troubled since you preached that
+sermon yesterday, I could scarcely sleep.  And I made up my mind I'd come
+to you the first thing this morning.  Mr. Plimpton and I have been
+discussing it.  In fact, people are talking of nothing else.  We dined
+with the Laureston Greys last night, and they, too, were full of it."
+Charlotte Plimpton looked at him, and the flow of her words suddenly
+diminished.  And she added, a little lamely for her, "Spiritual matters
+in these days are so difficult, aren't they?"
+
+"Spiritual matters always were difficult, Mrs. Plimpton," he said.
+
+"I suppose so," she assented hurriedly, with what was intended for a
+smile.  "But what I came to ask you is this--what are we to teach our
+children?"
+
+"Teach them the truth," the rector replied.
+
+"One of the things which troubled me most was your reference to modern
+criticism," she went on, recovering her facility.  "I was brought up to
+believe that the Bible was true.  The governess--Miss Standish, you know,
+such a fine type of Englishwoman--reads the children Bible stories every
+Sunday evening.  They adore them, and little Wallis can repeat them
+almost by heart--the pillar of cloud by day, Daniel in the lions' den,
+and the Wise Men from the East.  If they aren't true, some one ought to
+have told us before now."
+
+A note of injury had crept into her voice.
+
+"How do you feel about these things yourself?" Holder inquired.
+
+"How do I feel?  Why, I have never thought about them very much--they
+were there, in the Bible!"
+
+"You were taught to believe them?"
+
+"Of course," she exclaimed, resenting what seemed a reflection on the
+Gore orthodoxy.
+
+"Do they in any manner affect your conduct?"
+
+"My conduct?"  she repeated.  "I don't know what you mean.  I was brought
+up in the church, and Mr. Plimpton has always gone, and we are bringing
+up the children to go.  Is that what you mean?"
+
+"No," Hodder answered, patiently, "that is not what I mean.  I ask
+whether these stories in any way enter into your life, become part of
+you, and tend to make you a more useful woman?"
+
+"Well--I have never considered them in that way," she replied, a little
+perplexed.
+
+"Do you believe in them yourself?"
+
+"Why--I don't know,--I've never thought.  I don't suppose I do,
+absolutely--not in those I have mentioned."
+
+"And you think it right to teach things to your children which you do not
+yourself believe?"
+
+"How am I to decide?" she demanded.
+
+"First by finding out yourself what you do believe," he replied, with a
+touch of severity.
+
+"Mr. Hodder!" she cried in a scandalized voice, "do you mean to say that
+I, who have been brought up in this church, do not know what Christianity
+is."
+
+He looked at her and shook his head.
+
+"You must begin by being honest with yourself," he went on, not heeding
+her shocked expression.  "If you are really in earnest in this matter,
+I should be glad to help you all I can.  But I warn you there is no
+achievement in the world more difficult than that of becoming a,
+Christian.  It means a conversion of your whole being something which you
+cannot now even imagine.  It means a consuming desire which,--I fear,--in
+consideration of your present mode of life, will be difficult to
+acquire."
+
+"My present mode of life!" she gasped.
+
+"Precisely," said the rector.  He was silent, regarding, her.  There was
+discernible not the slightest crack of crevice in the enamel of this
+woman's worldly armour.
+
+For the moment her outraged feelings were forgotten.  The man had
+fascinated her.  To be told, in this authoritative manner, that she was
+wicked was a new and delightful experience.  It brought back to her the
+real motive of her visit, which had in reality been inspired not only by
+the sermon of the day before, but by sheer curiosity.
+
+"What would you have me do?" she demanded.
+
+"Find yourself."
+
+"Do you mean to say that I am not--myself?" she asked, now completely
+bewildered.
+
+"I mean to say that you are nobody until you achieve conviction."
+
+For Charlotte Plimpton, nee Gore, to be told in her own city, by the
+rector of her own church that she was nobody was an event hitherto
+inconceivable!  It was perhaps as extraordinary that she did not resent.
+it.  Curiosity still led her on.
+
+"Conviction?"  she repeated.  "But I have conviction, Mr. Hodder.  I
+believe in the doctrines of the Church."
+
+"Belief!" he exclaimed, and checked himself strongly.  "Conviction
+through feeling.  Not until then will you find what you were put in the
+world for."
+
+"But my husband--my children?  I try to do my duty."
+
+"You must get a larger conception of it," Hodder replied.
+
+"I suppose you mean," she declared, "that I am to spend the rest of my
+life in charity."
+
+"How you would spend the rest of your life would be revealed to you,"
+said the rector.
+
+It was the weariness in his tone that piqued her now, the intimation
+that he did not believe in her sincerity--had not believed in it from
+the first.  The life-long vanity of a woman used to be treated with
+consideration, to be taken seriously, was aroused.  This extraordinary
+man had refused to enter into the details which she inquisitively craved.
+
+Charlotte Plimpton rose.
+
+"I shall not bother you any longer at present, Mr. Hodder," she said
+sweetly.  "I know you must have, this morning especially, a great deal to
+trouble you."
+
+He met her scrutiny calmly.
+
+"It is only the things we permit to trouble us that do so, Mrs.
+Plimpton," he replied.  "My own troubles have arisen largely from a lack
+of faith on the part of those whom I feel it is my duty to influence."
+
+It was then she delivered her parting shot, which she repeated, with much
+satisfaction, to her husband that evening.  She had reached the door.
+Was there a special service at Calvary yesterday?"  she asked innocently,
+turning back.
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"I wondered.  Mr. Parr was there; I'm told--and he's never been known
+to desert St. John's except on the rarest occasions.  But oh, Mr. Hodder,
+I must congratulate you on your influence with Alison.  When she has been
+out here before she never used to come to church at all."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Church as a means of doling out ill-gotten gains to the poor
+Hastened to deny, although it was exactly what she had meant
+It is only the things we permit to trouble us that do so
+Priests, had gone from murder to  mass and from mass to murder
+Religion was a form of insurance of the soul
+She--had she grown? or merely wandered?
+Subtlety in such affairs is not a masculine trait (love affairs)
+Wasted opportunity
+Without explanations
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSIDE OF THE CUP, V6, BY CHURCHILL ***
+
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