sation 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