e 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