elf
escaped. Fatty degeneration of the soul!

The little man, seeing the expression on the rector's face, curbed his
excitement, and feared he had gone too far.

"You will pardon me!" he said penitently, "I forget myself. I did not
mean all clergymen."

"I have never heard it put so well," Holder declared. "That is exactly
what occurs in many cases."

"Yes, it is that," said Engel, still puzzled, but encouraged, eyeing the
strong face of the other. "And they lament that the ministry hasn't
more big men. Sometimes they get one with the doctrinal type of mind--a
Newman--but how often? And even a Newman would be of little avail
to-day. It is Eucken who says that the individual, once released from
external authority, can never be turned back to it. And they have been
released by the hundreds of thousands ever since Luther's time, are
being freed by the hundreds of thousands to-day. Democracy, learning,
science, are releasing them, and no man, no matter how great he may be,
can stem that tide. The able men in the churches now--like your Phillips
Brooks, who died too soon--are beginning to see this. They are those who
developed after the vows of the theological schools were behind them.
Remove those vows, and you will see the young men come. Young men are
idealists, Mr. Hodder, and they embrace other professions where the mind
is free, and which are not one whit better paid than the ministry.

"And what is the result," he cried, "of the senseless insistence on the
letter instead of the spirit of the poetry of religion? Matthew Arnold
was a thousand times right when he inferred that Jesus Christ never
spoke literally and yet he is still being taken literally by most
churches, and all the literal sayings which were put into his mouth
are maintained as Gospel truth! What is the result of proclaiming
Christianity in terms of an ancient science and theology which awaken
no quickening response in the minds and hearts of to-day? That!" The
librarian thrust a yellow hand towards the pile of books. "The new wine
has burst the old skin and is running all over the world. Ah, my friend,
if you could only see, as I do, the yearning for a satisfying religion
which exists in this big city! It is like a vacuum, and those books
are rushing to supply it. I little thought," he added dreamily, "when
I renounced the ministry in so much sorrow that one day I should have
a church of my own. This library is my church, and men and women of all