filled;'

and it was that moment by the river which worked in him through all the
prosaic and perplexing details of this new attempt to carry enthusiasm
into life.

It was soon plain to him that in this teeming section of London the
chance of the religious reformer lay entirely among the _upper working
class_. In London, at any rate, all that is most prosperous and
intelligent among the working class holds itself aloof--broadly
speaking--from all existing spiritual agencies, whether of Church or
Dissent.

Upon the genuine London artisan the Church has practically no hold
whatever; and Dissent has nothing like the hold which it has on similar
material in the great towns of the North. Towards religion in general
the prevailing attitude is one of indifference tinged with hostility.
'Eight hundred thousand people in South London, of whom the enormous
proportion belong to the working class, and among them, Church and
Dissent nowhere--_Christianity not in possession_.' Such is the estimate
of an Evangelical of our day; and similar laments come from all parts of
the capital. The Londoner is on the whole more conceited, more
prejudiced, more given over to crude theorising, than his North-country
brother, the mill-hand, whose mere position, as one of a homogeneous and
tolerably constant body, subjects him to a continuous discipline of
intercourse and discussion. Our popular religion, broadly speaking,
means nothing to him. He is sharp enough to see through its
contradictions and absurdities; he has no dread of losing what he never
valued; his sense of antiquity, of history, is _nil_; and his life
supplies him with excitement enough without the stimulants of
'other-worldliness.' Religion has been on the whole irrationally
presented to him, and the result on his part has been an irrational
breach with the whole moral and religious order of ideas.

But the race is quick-witted and imaginative. The Greek cities which
welcomed and spread Christianity carried within them much the same
elements as are supplied by certain sections of the London working
class--elements of restlessness, of sensibility, of passion. The mere
intermingling of races, which a modern capital shares with those old
towns of Asia Minor, predisposes the mind to a greater openness and
receptiveness, whether for good or evil.

As the weeks passed on, and after the first inevitable despondency
produced by strange surroundings and an unwonted isolation had begun